The Jewish Star

The JEWISH Vayigash • Dec. 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 • Torah columns pages 18–19 • Luach page 18 • Vol 17, No 48

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Arrest short-circuts plan to murder Jews The annual Chanukah telethon hosted by Rabbi Anchelle Perl of Chabad Mineola featured Shmuel and Bentzion Marcus of 8th Day (left), Cantor Avi Albrecht (lighting menorah on the eighth night,

with Rabbi Perl), and plenty of inspiration. The event, telecast live on area cable networks and streamed at ChanukahTelethon.com, raised $436,507, Rabbi Perl said.

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Shoot ‘em up! Rabbis say there’s no halachic excuse not to vaccinate kids The Jewish Star Rabbi Hershel Billet of the Young Israel of Woodmere endorsed “the view that advocates a pro-vaccination policy,” in an email to his congregants that was accompanied by a strongly worded article by Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt, an assistant rabbi at YIW who is also chief of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiologist at South Nassau Communities Hospital.

“Parents who do not vaccinate their children are negligent at the very least — and the net conclusion is that they are irresponsible with their children, the children of others, and all newborns up to a year old,” Rabbi Billet wrote in the Nov. 28 email.

“There are no legitimate religious grounds to oppose vaccination. There are very clear religious grounds to make vaccination of children obligatory! Herd immunity only works if everyone is vaccinated. Clearly and tragically it did not work in Brooklyn or Monsey.”

Meanwhile, the president of the Touro College and University System and the chief executive officer of Touro’s New York Medical College published a column that also criticized outliers in frum communities who continue to refuse to vaccinate their children (see page 17).

Attached to Rabbi Billet’s email were articles

by Dr. Irit Rasooly, an Orthodox Jewish pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, See Vaccinate on page 16

In Germany, the rabbis are back

By Ben Harris for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation Though he was just 6 years old on the night of Kristallnacht, Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu can still recall the horror: Torah scrolls burning in the courtyard of his father’s synagogue. His father taken by the Gestapo to the concentration camp at Dachau.

The grandson of a prominent Munich rabbi with whom he shares his name, Ehrentreu fled his native Germany for England on the Kindertransport and rose to become a prominent rabbi in his own right and, eventually, the head of London’s rabbinical court.

Some eight decades later, in 2009, he was back in Germany, standing in his grandfather’s rebuilt synagogue for the ordination of the first graduates of the Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin, the only Orthodox rabbinical seminary in the country — and the successor to a famous rabbini-

cal school shuttered by Nazis in 1938.

In remarks broadcast live on German television, Ehrentreu noted the symbolism of signing his name — and his grandfather’s — on the ordination certificates.

“For me,” he said, “the circle has closed.”

The rebirth of Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust is fraught with symbolism. The Rabbinerseminar itself, founded in 2009 with the help of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, is the successor to the legendary Hildesheimer rabbinical seminary, which operated from 1873 until its 1938 closure by the Nazis.

Since the school’s reestablishment, with Ehrentreu presiding, it has trained 16 Orthodox rabbis. They now serve communities across Germany, most of them populated by immigrants from the Rabbi Zsolt Balla, who attended the semi- former Soviet Union who moved there nar, celebrates Chanukah with his commu- after the fall of communism. nity in Leipzig, Germany.

Courtesy of Balla See Berlin on page 15

Combined Sources A 21-year-old man who allegedly told an undercover FBI agent he wanted to kill Jews — including a rabbi — was arrested last week for planning to attack a synagogue in the Toledo, Ohio, area.

The suspect, Damon Joseph of Holland, Ohio, said he was inspired by the gunman who shot up the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11, according to the Department of Justice.

“I admire what the guy did with the shooting actually,” Joseph told the agent. “I can see myself carrying out this type of operation.”

He told the agent that he wanted to kill a rabbi, the Toledo Blade reported, citing an FBI affidavit. He also said, according to the FBI, that “Jewish people were evil and deserved what was coming to them.”

Joseph was “inspired by ISIS’s call to violence and hate,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers. “He planned to attack the victims, based on their religion … in the name of ISIS, and hoped that it would lead to the deaths of many and spread fear.

“His alleged actions would be an assault on the liberties and respect for humanity we hold so dear. We will continue to make every effort to prevent such attacks from occurring.”

U.S. Attorney Justin Herdman said that “this man spent months planning a violent terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS here in the United States, and eventually targeted a Jewish synagogue in the Toledo area. The charges describe a calculated man fueled by an ideology of hatred and intent on See Toledo on page 17 killing innocent people.

Bibi: Jews will stay JERUSALEM (JTA) — No Jewish settlers will be forced to leave and they will build more homes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday in the wake of a drive-by shooting in Judea-Smaria that left seven injured.

“As long as I am prime minister, not even one Jew will be uprooted from his home,” Netanyahu said at the dedication of a new interchange on Route 60.

Among those injured in Sunday’s attack outside of Ofra was a 21-year-old pregnant woman whose baby was delivered surgically to save her life. (See page 9.)

“This act of terrorism, like the others, teaches the depth of our enemies’ hatred toward us, the Jews and the Israelis,” Netanyahu said. “They have no moral constraints in attacking innocents. We will pursue those responsible for the attack and we will make them pay.”

Netanyahu asserted that not only will Jewish settlers not be forced to leave their homes, “they will build more homes.”

Why Bush was reluctant to wear a yarmulke

By Marshall Breger WASHINGTON — George H.W. Bush was a man of uncommon decency. He also was a man of uncommon integrity.

I worked for him for over 10 years, while he was vice president and then president. My memories could fill a book (or at least a chapter). Being out of politics, I no longer maintain the proverbial “wall of fame” that Washington lawyers have of themselves with famous people. But one of the few photos I have kept was one of Vice President Bush holding my daughter, then 5 months old, lovingly and affectionately. When I learned of his death last week, I walked over to my mantelpiece to commune with it for some minutes.

George H.W. Bush was both a man of principle and action. I remember a small meeting at his residence, called at the request of the Israeli ambassador about the deteriorating situation of the Ethiopian Jews still in Africa. A Pentagon official said they were quietly taking three to five Jews out every week on a commercial airplane to Brussels and doubted they could substantially increase the number.

The vice president broke in and pointed out that the premise of the meeting was that the Ethiopians’ situation in Somalia was perilous. The Pentagon official agreed.

If so, Bush asked, why can’t we send in some airplanes and airlift them out all at once? He followed up with a request that a plan be given to me to get this done.

Given that directive, the Pentagon thought boldly and brought back a plan that it had first said was impossible. I will never forget the real emotion in Bush’s voice when he called me from Air Force Two to tell me that the first Ethiopian Jews were coming down the gangplank in a military airport south of Tel Aviv. There was emotion in my voice as well.

George Bush was a religious man, but he always kept his religion private. Unlike many politicians of today, he did not choose to parade his belief to the world. Accompanying the vice president to the dedication in 1984 of a new building for the National Museum of American Jewish Military History here, I brought him six yarmulkes so he could choose one to wear while affixing the building’s mezuzah. He told me he felt uncomfortable doing so in that he felt the Jews present would see him wearing the skullcap and believe he was pandering to them. I was embarrassed to tell him that the Jews wanted to be pandered to and would take it as a sign of disrespect if he didn’t.

He was also a compassionate man. Once when traveling on

retrospective

President George H.W. Bush poses for photographers following an Oval Office address to the nation on Sept. 27, 1991.

Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images

Air Force One he brought up a mutual acquaintance whom he thought had been acting strangely and might be deteriorating mentally. He asked me to alert a relative who might be able to intervene and report back to him if his help was needed.

George Bush had a principled sense of fairness as well, even when it went against the feelings of the Jewish community. He once invited me to a private lunch in his office, where he spread out a map of Jerusalem and asked me to explain each and every Jewish settlement in the city. He saw such settlement as injurious to the peace process, telling me it was as if two parties were negotiating over a quarry and at night one of them entered and removed stones, reducing its value. I tried to explain the attachment of Jews to Jerusalem, but to him it seemed fundamentally unfair to change the status quo while negotiating about it.

For most American Jews, however, his presidency was marked by his intemperate outburst against members of the

American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying Congress about the U.S. loan guarantees. AIPAC felt the loans to Israel were necessary to assist the absorption of Soviet Jewish immigrants. Bush supported the guarantees but did not want them used to subsidize building in the West Bank. Then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and AIPAC fought him on it.

After a day of AIPAC lobbying, Bush pushed back.

“I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the Hill working on the other side of the question. We’ve got one lonely little guy down here doing it,” he said.

The Jewish community erupted, claiming that Bush was suggesting “dual loyalty” and encouraging anti-Semitism. The atmosphere can only be described as rancid. Bush later told me he regretted the outburst, not because of the policy views it expressed but because he so hated the thought that his remarks might engender anti-Semitism.

Some years later, when he was no longer president, I attended a small dinner party at the Israeli ambassador’s residence. The conversation turned to former President Bush, and the American Jews present spoke of how they reviled him. The Israeli military personnel at the dinner stopped them short. No president, they pointed out, had done more for Israel’s security and its relationship with the U.S. military.

I can speak of much more: of his assistance in getting individual refuseniks out of Russia, of his quiet work in helping Syrian Jewish women leave Syria “to find husbands,” and of his support (through Secretary of State Jim Baker) for the Madrid peace conference, which laid the groundwork for the Oslo accords and the now, on life support, two-state solution.

And this does not even begin to cover the extraordinary diplomacy that helped navigate peacefully the end of the Soviet Union and the grand coalition that successfully led to the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. He helped bring abut the reunification of Germany. He fostered a “new world order,” one that led to greater American power in the context of winwin scenarios for all our allies.

For these and other reasons there is no doubt that his memory will be for a blessing.

Marshall J. Breger was a special assistant to President Reagan and his liaison to the Jewish community and as the chief lawyer of the Labor Department during the George H.W. Bush administration.

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By Alan Grabinsky, JTA MEXICO CITY — During her ultimately suc- at the port of Veracruz in 1942, barely escaping cessful campaign for Mexico City mayor, Clau- the Holocaust. She attended elementary school dia Sheinbaum made a reference to her Jewish in the Sephardic school of Mexico City, later purheritage. Speaking before a group of Jewish sued a career as a biologist and became one of women, she said she was proud of those origins. the first Sephardic women to go into Mexican academia. Last week, she re“We celebrated all the ceived the National Autonoholidays at my grandparmous University Award, ents’ house,” she recalled.

For Sheinbaum, 56, the one of the most prestigious capital city’s first elected academic awards in the Jewish and female mayor, country, for her studies on the reference to her Jewlung functions.

Both of Sheinbaum’s ishness was rare. Like many parents were heavily inother liberal, secular Jewvolved in Mexican leftist ish politicians around the circles of the 1960s — world, Sheinbaum rarely they protested in defense identifies publicly as Jewof Cuba, were involved ish. Despite extensive covin labor movements and erage in the Jewish media, joined in the famous stuher relationship with her dent revolts of 1968 that Jewish identity is tenuous. ultimately resulted in poSheinbaum’s victory was hailed as the feminist highlice violence. Although the light of Mexico’s dramatic Claudia Sheinbaum, the first Jewish family lived in the Jewish election season. Her six-year mayor of Mexico City, in the capital on neighborhoods of Polanco Carlos Tischler/Getty Images and Condesa, they eventerm no doubt will have a Aug. 1. tremendous impact on the tually moved south to be lives of the approximately 25 million people who closer to the National Autonomous University, populate the metropolitan Mexico City region. where Pardo worked.

Claudia, the couple’s second daughter, went She would prefer to talk about issues like high crime rates or social mobility rather than to liberal non-Jewish schools and studied physics talk about herself. On the infrequent occasions at the same university as her mother. An expert that she shines the spotlight on herself, she most- on climate change, she was part of an internaly emphasizes that she’s a scientist. She is a well- tional team that won a Nobel Prize in 2007. Like respected physics and engineering professor who her parents, she was involved in student activism and, in 1998, helped form the Revolutionary has helped the U.N. research climate change.

Her family has no formal relationship with Democratic Party, for many years the main leftMexico’s institutionalized Jewish community ist opposition party in Mexico. She left the party and she has never taken a political stance from six years ago to form Morena, or the National an overtly Jewish perspective: She hasn’t made Regeneration Movement, with Andres Manuel any public pronouncement about Israel or spo- Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s new president.

Sheinbaum’s distance from the Jewish comken as a member of a minority, even though Jews make up far less than 1 percent of the capi- munity hasn’t stopped journalists and others tal city’s population. But her identity still compli- from noting her identity. A 2012 article described a deep division in Morena between cated her rise to her powerful new post.

According to sources close to her family, who Sheinbaum and Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, a wellwished to remain anonymous, the Sheinbaums known geopolitics professor, also at the Nafeel more connected to a tradition of political ac- tional Autonomous University of Mexico, who spreads conspiracy theories about the Jewish tivism than their Jewish heritage.

Sheinbaum’s father, Carlos Sheinbaum, was billionaire George Soros and has been accused a Mexican-born chemical engineer who spent of anti-Semitism multiple times by Mexican much of his life living in Guadalajara, once the anti-discrimination authorities.

Jalife-Rahme, who says he is a founding home of a Jewish community with a few hundred families. His family, originally from Lithu- member of Morena, has accused Sheinbaum ania, arrived in Mexico during the 1920s, like of maintaining close ties with Jewish-owned most of Mexico’s Ashkenazi Jews. Carlos’s fa- real estate groups, including Grupo Danhos. In ther was a jewelry merchant who was involved recent years, Grupo Danhos has taken heat for behind the scenes in the semi-illegal Mexican constructing massive and controversial shopping Communist Party and had to distance him- centers in Mexico City. Illegal real estate conself from it or face persecution. According to struction has become a touchy subject in Mexico Sheinbaum’s mother, Annie Pardo, the family after multiple recent earthquakes — but espeobserved the High Holidays, spoke Yiddish and cially after the recent collapse of a new shopping center, Artz Pedregal, in July. ate Ashkenazi food at home.

Pardo comes from a family of assimilated BulGrupo Danhos’ owner, David Daniel Kabazz, is reported to have built close ties with Obrador when the latter was mayor of Mexico City. His daughter, Elvira Daniel Kabazz, served as a legal adviser to both the developer and Sheinbaum.

Sheinbaum has not spoken about these claims, but sources close to her told JTA that she has been a vociferous opponent of JalifeRahme within the party. She has tremendous Commercial & Residential clout in Morena, and since her fight with JalifeRahme, he has been relegated to a fringe role Licensed & Insured — he has backed Morena’s surge in the far left media such as Venezuela’s TeleSur channel, but not as an official party member. www.iknowaguyinc.com Apart from this, the local news does not 12 461 Central Ave Cedarhurst NY 11516 touch upon or discuss Sheinbaum’s Jewish heriLic #H04398900 • NYC Track #GC611686 tage — likely how she wants it.

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

Mexico City mayor puts science, crime, feminism ahead of her Judaism

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Trump Chanukah parties cheer embassy move

By Ron Kampeas, JTA WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump presents as an anti-Barack Obama, boasting about how much of his predecessor’s work, from the courts to immigration to medical care to the Iran deal, he has undone.

Trump, naturally, mentioned undoing the Iran deal at both of his Chanukah parties on Thursday.

But in that “both” lies a concession that Trump likely will never cop to: He has taken up a tradition that Obama initiated, doubling the number of Chanukah parties to two. (Last year, the White House hosted one Chanukah party.)

His special guests at the first party were eight Holocaust survivors. The second featured the Pollack family, who lost a daughter, Meadow, in the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, this year.

The mood was festive, according to those attending. Mentions of Trump’s pro-Israel moves were cheered.

From the pool report, filed by a Congressional Quarterly reporter: “POTUS applauded the Jewish people for building Israel into a ‘mighty and majestic nation.’ He then pledged his administration would always stand beside Israel. That, and what was perceived as tepid applause, led one of the gentlemen called onstage by Trump to shout from over his left shoulder, ‘Let’s hear it, everybody. Go! C’mon!’ as he encouraged them to cheer louder. The crowd obliged as POTUS smiled.”

Then: “As POTUS began speaking about recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, the same gentleman again urged the crowd to make more noise. Again, they obliged. POTUS thanked them. That’s when the ‘four more years!’ chant started. Someone in the crowd noted, once the math is completed from this date, it would be ‘six more years.’ Trump expressed his agreement with the 2 + 4 equation.”

Some folks in the room at the afternoon party

President Donald Trump speaks at a Chanukah reception in the East Room of the White House on Dec 6.

Oliver Contreras/Pool/Getty Images

were nonplussed when Trump introduced Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, as admirers of “your” country — that is, Israel.

“I want to thank Vice President Mike Pence. A tremendous supporter, a tremendous supporter of yours. And Karen. And they go there and they love your country. They love your country. And they love this country. That’s a good combination, right?”

That raised a few eyebrows in the room, a participant told JTA, and engendered commentary outside of it, where people wondered whether Trump understood that American Jews tend to love Israel, but are, well, American.

“Just a nice reminder that the line between antisemitism and philosemitism is so, so thin,” Shayna Weiss, the associate director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University, said on Twitter.

The ace in Trump’s hand is his decision one year ago to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which the hawkish pro-Israel crowd and the evangelical community loved, and even pro-

Israel centrists found hard to criticize. He often mentions it at campaign events, and of course, he mentioned it at the Chanukah parties.

“They literally had me signing something — over a billion dollars — to build the embassy,” he said, speaking at length of the costs of the relocation. “And [U.S. Ambassador] David [Friedman] said, ‘You know, we already own a site. It’s the best site in all of Jerusalem. The building is set back. We could renovate the building, and we could do it for less than $200,000.’ So I said, ‘So you got a billion and it will probably never get built or you got $200,000.’ Now what I said to David — I said — first time I’ve ever done this in my entire life — I said, ‘David, I never said this before, but $200,000 is too cheap.’ ‘You got to raise it. How about $400,000?’ And we did it for right around $400,000, using all Jerusalem stone.”

As he often does, the mogul turned politician mangled the number, conflating the $400,000 it cost to move embassy operations to an existing Jerusalem consulate building with the costs of renovating the building to meet embassy specifi-

cations (an estimated $21 million), let alone the $1 billion it might cost to build an entirely new embassy.

(The existing building was already “all Jerusalem stone,” which is a requirement of the Jerusalem municipality.)

In prepared remarks, Trump noted the resiliency of the Jewish people, and how it is celebrated during Chanukah. He also spoke of the massacre in October at a Pittsburgh synagogue, when an anti-Semitic gunman killed 11 worshippers.

There also was a nod to post-election bipartisanship. Last year, the White House invited no congressional Democrats (although most Jews in Congress are Democrats). This year they were invited, perhaps a nod to the Democratic victory in the U.S. House of Representatives. Turning up were Reps. Ted Deutch of Florida and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, as well as Jared Polis, the governor-elect of Colorado.

It was a busy Chanukah week in the nation’s capital. The Israeli Embassy hosted a Chanukah party the same day. The congressional party took place at the Library of Congress, co-hosted by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schutz, D-Fla., and Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y. And the Republican Jewish Coalition had its bash at the Trump International Hotel.

Earlier in the week, the Austrian and Polish embassies hosted parties — the latter for the first time — in conjunction with Israel’s embassy, a signal of warming ties between the countries.

The Indian Embassy hosted a party on Saturday.

The American Jewish Committee co-sponsored the Austrian and Indian events.

The festivities were launched Sunday with the “National Menorah” lighting on the Ellipse, in front of the White House — the event organized for 25 years now by Chabad. This year, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke raised the crane to light the candle with American Friends of Lubavitch executive vice president Rabbi Levi Shemtov.

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December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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By Liel Asulin, CAMERA November 30 is a day to commemorate approximately 850,000 Jews who fled anti-Jewish persecution across the Arab world in the 20th century. Every year on this day, I reflect on my own family’s story of exodus, and every year I find it gives me new insights into the story of Israel and the Jewish people.

This month, I spoke with a member of the Jewish “anti-occupation” camp. In the course of our discussion, he said that he prefers not to base his understanding of the world in fear.

The quip took me by surprise, but it seemed to provide the basis for many of his political positions. For context, we were discussing the Israeli security fence — each of us looking for the inconsistencies in the other’s argument.

He attempted to connect my support for Israel’s barrier with Donald Trump’s plan for a wall along the US-Mexico border. I protested, citing the reduction in the number of attacks from the West Bank since the barrier was constructed. He yielded, saying, “I can’t argue with that.” I was satisfied that I had bested my opponent with an argument grounded in fact. Then he said it. “I just prefer not to base my understanding of the world in fear.”

While the conversation focused on border security, I sensed that he meant to suggest that Israel’s creation was a product of fear.

Having reached an impasse, the conversation ended, but the sentence lingered in my ears and began to replace my self-satisfaction with self-doubt. I began to wrestle with a question: Is my support for Israel borne out of fear?

I looked to my grandparents — refugees whose stories have always been an inspiration for my exploration of Israel and Judaism.

My grandparents, Savta Chana and Sabba Moshe, were born in Tinghir, Morocco, some time in the early 1930s. No one is quite sure of the dates because there are no records, so we celebrate their birthdays on Dec. 31, since they must have occurred at some point in the last year. Tinghir is a small village at the base of the High Atlas Mountains comprised largely of Amazigh people, also known as Berber.

In the early 20th century, Morocco was seen as a relatively safe place to be Jewish, thanks in large part to King Mohammad V, who famously responded to the Vichy government’s demand to list all of the countries Jews by saying, “We have no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccan citizens.”

However, Jews lived as second-class citizens, or dhimmi, in Morocco, subject to restrictions on their daily lives. In the two decades that followed the creation of the State of Israel, Morocco, along with the rest of the Arab world, was virtually emptied of its Jewish citizens.

My family suffered the consequences of being Jewish in the Arab world before and after the creation of Israel. I heard stories of riots

First person targeting the Jewish mellah, a walled Jewish quarter akin to a European ghetto. The men of the family would, after hiding their wives and children, stand outside and fight for their lives.

In one such instance, my great-grandfather was lynched by an angry mob, leaving my grandfather, a boy of 4 or 5 years old, without a father.

But based on conversations I’ve had with my family, I am certain it was not fear that drove their flight from Morocco, but a love for the Land of Israel.

To be sure, thousands of the Middle East’s Jewish refugees were forced to leave their homes

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

850,000 refugee Jews who fled Arab lands

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The ‘mellah’ in Tinghir, Morocco.

behind — motivated by threats to their personal safety — but in searching for a new home, most chose Israel because of this love and devotion.

In our time, there is great reason for Jews to be fearful. A mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville and a Labour Party leader in the United Kingdom whose words have left 40 percent of the country’s Jews considering emigration.

Even in Israel, citizens endure threats from hostile Iranian tyrants with armed proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Israel is a young country whose citizens have endured loss since its creation. The scars of war and intifada, kidnappings, stabbings and car-rammings are etched deep in every Israeli’s psyche. The further back in our history you look, the more you realize that this has been the price Jews pay for their membership in this ethno-religious group.

I often wonder what possessed my family to remain Jewish through the years. In hostile lands, facing threats to their lives and more commonly the burden of their faith, it would have been easier to turn their eyes away from Zion.

It is because they did not succumb to this fear that I can answer confidently that Israel is not a trepidatious project of self-ghettoization, as the person with whom I spoke may have suggested.

It is an expression of an enduring love that has survived millennia, built by Jewish refugees from across the world.

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German Jews now embrace Russian immigrants

By Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA MUNICH — Weeks after they emigrated from Russia and moved to Germany, the Nedlin family sought to join the local Jewish community.

Registering for membership in a Jewish community — a practice common in European countries — was a significant step for the Nedlins, who before emigrating in 1992 had grown up in the repressive Soviet Union. There they were forced to hide or downplay their Jewish identity due to state anti-Semitism and discrimination against religion.

But the local community didn’t reciprocate.

“At first they told us we can’t join,” Anna Nedlin, who was 5 at the time, recalled. “They didn’t want anything to do with us.” But at her parents’ insistence, “they sent our documents to Frankfurt to check if we’re really Jewish.”

The experience of the Nedlins, who eventually were allowed to join the synagogue, was typical of many of the 170,000 Russian speakers who immigrated to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The newcomers faced a rift with the 30,000 “postwar” Jews whom many expected to welcome them.

The split has had a deep, lasting and polarizing effect on a community reestablished by Holocaust survivors, distracting at times from the mission of revival. It flares up in local communal politics, but, 30 years on, has mostly healed.

More often, the Russian-speaking immigrants and their children are credited with energizing and strengthening a minority group whose viability used to be uncertain.

When the post-Soviet immigration began, Jews in Germany suddenly found themselves struggling to cater to large numbers of people with little more than the shirts on their backs. It didn’t help that the newcomers had little knowledge of Judaism and attitudes shaped by decades of living under repressive governments.

The postwar community, which was largely descended from recent Eastern European immigrants, would “look upon the Soviet Jews as maybe not even being Jews and being uneducated [yet] taking over their communities,” said Esther Knochenhauer, 34, who was born in East Germany a year after her parents immigrated there from Russia.

Even before the reunification of Germany in 1990, the East German leader Lothar de Maiziere began welcoming Soviet Jews. Helmut Kohl, the former chancellor, adopted the same policy after unification to make amends for and reverse the

Children stick white roses into a Star of David sculpture at the construction site of a new synagogue in Potsdam, Germany on Nov. 9, the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Bernd Settnik/AFP/Getty Images

Nazis’ annihilation of Judaism in Germany. Following reunification, immigration requests by Jews were expedited, given equal status to those by ethnic Germans.

The Berlin Jewish community, under its president until 1992, Heinz Galinski, hired dozens of Russian-speaking Jews to help with absorption. Many Jewish communities tried to assist penniless newcomers however they could.

But these well-intended steps sometimes stoked tensions.

It made some “wrongly frame” communal politics as “a struggle between Russian speakers in power who do shady things and German-speaking opposition,” according to Sergey Lagodinsky, a Russia-born jurist in the Berlin Jewish community’s elections.

Some dismissed the desire of Russian-speaking Jews for contact with Jewish life as utilitarian, he added. In the European context, joining the community allows a member access to facilities as well as free or subsidized services for weddings, circumcision and bar and bat mitzvahs.

That suggestion was especially insulting to families like Knochenhauer’s. Her mother’s family had held Passover Seders in communist Russia.

Yet Nedlin and Knochenhauer’s own life stories reflect their di-

vided community’s ability to transcend the culture clash, which ended up becoming the community’s lifeline. This year, both women married Jewish men descended from postwar families.

Anna Nedlin was married at a Cologne synagogue to Roni Lehrer, whom she met 10 years ago at the Mahane Jewish camp.

The couple, both historians, are expecting their first child.

Lehrer, 30, credits the Russian-speaking influx with more than just continuing his own Jewish family.

“We wouldn’t be around if not for their arrival,” he said. “We would’ve been doomed as a community.”

Lehrer’s mother, he said, joined the Jewish community of Cologne in the early 1980s, when it was “a dwindling group of 1,000 people.” She did not expect Jewish life to survive there, planning to move to Israel so that her children would grow up with Judaism. But a decade later, “we’re a community of 5,500 people.”

This resulted in the 2002 reestablishment of a Jewish school in Cologne, the Lauder Morijah School, and the opening of other Jewish institutions. Two-thirds of the 60 counselors trained annually by the community for youth work in Cologne, Lehrer said, come from Jewish homes with at least one Russian-speaking parent.

Language and food differences are some of the minor issues younger mixed couples can expect, according to Knochenhauer’s Berlin-born husband, who asked not to be identified. (Knochenhauer said his preference for a low profile was typical of postwar Jews, and one of the things that sets them apart from Russian speakers who “won’t stay silent.”)

Her family “makes enough food for an army, which always makes me wonder just how many people they plan on hosting,” Knochenhauer’s husband said. But these minor differences are not comparable to the challenges of interfaith marriages, Knochenhauer said.

Still, the arrival of thousands of Russian speakers has had a lasting effect on communal politics, shaping the processes of some communities to this day, everyone interviewed for this article agreed.

One of the first parties representing Russian speakers in the internal elections of the Berlin Jewish Community was called “Silent Majority.” From the mid-1990s onward, the Russian-German divide became a permanent issue in internal elections campaigns, See Russians on page 16 according to Lagodinsky.

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December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

6

percent in annual growth in the sector in that same period.

Among European cities, the Portuguese city of Porto was expected to close 2018 with a 7 percent increase in incoming tourism. Since 2012, the city moved up 42 spots on the list to now be counted among the top 100 cities in tourism growth.

The increase in tourism to Jerusalem is due to in part to a global marketing effort by the Tourism Industry. According to the data, the ministry’s decision to offer special Black Friday discounts led to a 20 percent increase in inquiries to travel agents about purchasing plane tickets to Israel.

The Black Friday digital campaign received more than 157 million views, 500,000-plus clicks and saw some 70,000 inquiries from points of sale about purchasing a ticket to Israel.

According to Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, the ministry made the decision to join the campaign “to continue to break records, increase incoming tourism to Israel and meet the many demands. It was the right decision, and we hope the Black Friday celebrations will become a tradition.”

Some of the deals offered on tourism to Israel on Black Friday included flights from Germany to Eilat for 9.90 euros ($11.20). Discount flights were also on offer from Vienna and London to the southern resort city.

Tourism Ministry officials expect the 4 millionth tourist to arrive in Israel in 2018 to arrive this month. It’s also expected to see Israel break its previous record for inbound tourism in 2018.

Secret shul operated in Dubai for 3 years

By Dan Lavie and Israel Hayom Staff Three years ago, the small Jewish community in Dubai founded the first synagogue in the city, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

The community, including Jewish citizens of other countries who deal in finance, law, energy, and diamonds, rented a villa in a quiet residential area where they would pray.

The building also has a kosher kitchen and a few bedrooms for guests and community members who observe Shabbat.

The synagogue’s emergence from the shadows at this juncture is likely related to warming relations reported between Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other governments in the region.

In October, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise visit to Oman, and two other Israeli government ministers visited the UAE a few days later.

“We’ve come a long way since I first started going to Dubai 30 years ago,” Eli Epstein, a New Yorker who helped found the synagogue and do-

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nated a Torah, told Bloomberg News. “Back then, people actually told me that I should avoid using my last name because it sounds too Jewish.”

According to Bloomberg, the UAE in particular has sought to project an image of openness, easing restrictions on religions other than Islam in a campaign aimed at generating more business. The country has appointed a minister of tolerance, who in November sponsored a World Tolerance Summit for 1,200 Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews and others from around the world.

Despite the improved situation, however, some members of the synagogue are still opposed to speaking openly about it and have asked visitors not to reveal its location or write about its activities. Public opinion in the UAE is strongly pro-Palestinian and many people there view the government’s warming ties with Israel as a betrayal.

But the UAE’s push toward tolerance has led others to feel it’s safe to gradually lift the veil.

“I’d prefer not to live as a Marrano,” said Ross Kriel, a Johannesburg-born lawyer and a lay leader of the group, referring to Jews who professed Christianity to avoid persecution by the Spanish Inquisition while observing Judaism in secret. “The government’s attitude to our community is that they want us to feel comfortable being here, praying here, and doing business here,” he told Bloomberg.

Ghanem Nuseibeh, a co-founder of political risk consultants Cornerstone Global Associates, who occasionally visits the synagogue, told Bloomberg: “For decades, anything Jewish was avoided in the Arab world, and explicit signs of Jewishness were risky. A new generation of Arabs and Jews are more culturally accepting of each other.”

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By Ilan Gattegno, Israel Hayom Jerusalem is poised to become the world’s leading city in tourism growth, according to a new report by leading market research firm Euromonitor.

According to the report, the number of tourists around the world will hit 1.4 billion in 2018 — an increase of 5 percent over last year.

Jerusalem is set to lead in growth, with an expected 37.5 percent following a “more modest” increase of 32 percent in 2017. According to the report, Jerusalem owes its increasing popularity to “relative stability and a strong marketing push.”

The Indian cities of Chennai and Agra took second and third place on the list, with 30.4 percent and 24.3 percent increase in growth, respectively.

According to the report, tourism to other destinations in the Middle East and Africa — in particular, the Tunisian cities of Jerba and Sousse, and Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, which dropped out of the top 100 cities for tourism growth — would decline.

Euromonitor said this was largely due to the terrorist attacks that have hit those cities. One notable exception to this trend is Cairo, where after a decline, tourism appears to be getting back on track.

On a country-by-country analysis, Japan and India are leaders in terms of tourism growth. In Japan, the cities of Osaka and Chiba have seen an average annual respective increase of 43 percent and 35 percent between 2012 and 2017, while in India, New Delhi and Mumbai both saw an average of more than 20

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

Jerusalem leads world cities in tourist growth

7

Israel continues African nations breakthroughs

By Israel Kasnett, JNS Chadian President Idriss Déby’s historic visit to Israel last month did not occur in a vacuum. It is part of a larger effort

by Israel to develop close diplomatic ties with many African countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at this when he tweeted, “This visit reflects the revolution we are leading in Israel’s foreign relations. More countries are on the way.”

According to Yonatan Freeman from the political-science department at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, over the last two years, Israel “has increased its relationship with Africa.”

There are a number of reasons for this. First, Africa has many challenges that Israel can solve both in terms of government and the private sector, said Freeman. It also faces water and technical challenges with which Israel, also grappling with similar climates, can offer assistance.

Another reason is that Israel seeks to change anti-Israel voting patterns in international forums, such as the United Nations. “We want to get to those 1.3 billion people,” said Freeman. “In return, we want to get votes.”

The idea behind Israel’s thinking is that there are 54 recognized countries in Africa. The more states Israel can get to vote with it, or at least abstain from votes against it, the less it will come under attack in international arenas.

In addition, Freeman pointed out that Déby recently became president of the African Union, an organization Israel wants to join as an observer. Chad can provide that access.

“Most importantly,” Freeman told JNS, “the fact we have increased ties with Muslim countries proves they are no longer waiting for the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before they talk to us. In fact, they desire the Israeli solution to their many internal problems. And if there is one country in the world that can prove you can succeed without being dependent on a natural resource and being dependent on our own brains, that’s Israel.”

Diplomacy is in the air, and Israelis should expect practical changes on the ground.

Freeman explained that when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat came to Israel in the fall of 1977, he spoke in the Knesset, toured Beersheva, and that was before the peace agreement with Egypt.

Chadian President Idris Déby walks with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin during Déby’s historic visit to the Jewish state on Nov. 25.

Haim Zach/GPO

“There’s always a big visit before a big change,” said Freeman. “I think that is what is going to happen with Chad. Netanyahu is going to go over there, and I think they’re going to announce the start of an official diplomatic status between Chad and Israel.”

Freeman speculated that Netanyahu would likely be meeting with Muslim or Arab leaders who will be coming to Chad during his visit. “We might even hear of other diplomatic recognitions, and it may be a chance for others to do that with Israel in Chad,” he added.

Chad, according to Freedom House, is not a democratic country, noted Freeman, “but the Déby of 2018 is not the Déby of 1990. The person who came now is not a democratic statesman, but over the years, Chad has become more liberal.”

Freeman pointed out that “the part Israel will be doing with them, as done with many other countries in the developing world, is help them develop a civil society. The Chadian people

will be benefiting since Israel will be helping prop up and increase the democratic and civil society [there]. In the end, the more prosperous Chad is, the more political rights will be extended.”

Omer Dostri, a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, told JNS, “The president of Chad strictly said in the meeting with Netanyahu that the object of his official visit to Israel is to renew the diplomatic relations between the two countries. It could be assumed that an expression of that objective will be the opening of an Israeli embassy in N’Djamena and a Chadian embassy in Tel Aviv,” although the chance that an Arab Muslim country will open its embassy in Jerusalem is slim.

“Nevertheless,” said Dostri, “the two countries could decide to only open a consulate, at least for the beginning.”

Opposition leaders in Chad have voiced objections to renewed ties, raising questions over whether they can impact Déby’s decision, but according to Dostri, “the opposition’s objections will not have any impact on Israel-Chad relations whatsoever. … Déby is not exactly a democratic ruler. The opposition leaders in Chad have no real voice, and they do not have the political power to influence Déby’s decision.”

Dostri said Israel is well on the way to renewing ties with more African nations.

“Israel already renewed ties with the Republic of Guinea in January 2016 after 49 years. Also in 2016, Netanyahu met Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita at the Economic Community of West African States conference,” where the two leaders agreed on the warming of relations between their respective countries.

“Additionally,” Dostri said, “in the last year there are some reports, including reference from officials in Khartoum, about unofficial relations between Israel and Sudan. It is estimated that Mali and Sudan could be the next African countries to declare diplomatic relations with Israel.”

Freeman agreed with Dostri.

“Time will tell, but this is just the first part of it, and I think we will see more countries in Africa coming to Israel,” he said.

“I foresee more states, even Pakistan, Indonesia or Bangladesh. … I’m looking at a wave of Muslim-majority countries coming to Israel in terms of publicly talking about maintaining good relations even with the [Arab-Israeli] conflict still going on.”

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Shira and Amichai Ish-Ran married eight

By Yori Yalon, Efrat Forsher months ago and moved to Elon Moreh. Shira is and Israel Hayom Staff Medical staff at Shaare Zedek Medical Cen- studying education at Orot Israel College in Elter in Jerusalem were still battling on Tuesday kana, and Amichai is a yeshiva student in Elon to save the life of a baby delivered by cesarean Moreh.

On Monday, Meirav Sharvit, 17, and Chen section after his mother, Shira Ish-Ran, was shot in her upper body in a terrorist attack near the settlement of Ofra on Sunday.

Six other Israelis were wounded in the attack, including Ish-Ran’s husband. She was 30 weeks pregnant.

As of Tuesday morning, the baby was still in very serious condition.

Ish-Ran’s father, Chaim Silberstein, told Israeli media on Tuesday morning that while his daughter’s condition was improving, her hemoglobin levels had dropped.

Silberstein said this could indicate that there was still some Wedding photo of Amichai and Shira Ish-Ran, married earlier this year. Both bleeding and hoped were injured in a drive-by shooting by a Palestinian terrorists at a bus stop outCourtesy of the family that it was not seri- side of Ofra on Dec. 9. ous.

The hospital reported Tuesday that Ish-Ran Antebi, 16, who were lightly wounded in the shooting, recounted the terrifying moments of was awake and communicating.

Silberstein said his daughter had not yet the attack.

“At first, I was sure it was firecrackers. been informed of her newborn son’s precarious People got down on the ground, crawled, hid. condition.

Dr. Alon Schwartz, a senior trauma surgeon Chen and I crawled behind the hitchhiking post at the hospital, said Monday that the medical and hid there until the rescue teams arrived. team was concerned that the baby had sus- There were rounds being fired and people were tained neurological damage as a result of the screaming. People shouted, ‘Shots! Shots! And then I realized it was a terrorist attack. Our goal shooting.

“The baby is in critical condition in the is to contain terrorism, not run away. I’m not neonatal intensive care unit. He is on a venti- supposed to be afraid,” Sharvit said.

Antebi said, “I saw Shira, who was badly lator and his blood pressure is being regulated by medication. We’re still fighting for his life,” wounded, bleeding on the ground. I was talking with her just before the attack. I saw a car that Schwartz said.

Silberstein said his daughter teared up when fired shots and suddenly everything was covered in blood. I was hit in the chest by shrapnel she first saw her parents.

“We were so excited we had to leave [the and it’s a miracle I survived. Obviously, I’ll keep hitchhiking after I recover.” room] because her heart rate spiked,” he said.

GOC Central Command Maj. Gen. Nadav “There’s nothing like seeing your daughter open her eyes and talking through them be- Padan arrived at the hospital on Monday and cause her mouth is blocked with a tube. We are briefed the families on the steps the IDF was praying for her and for the baby, along with ev- taking to apprehend the terrorists who carried eryone in Israel. They need a lot of prayers. A out the attack.

As of Tuesday, the two suspected assailants miracle happened and our son-in-law, Amichai, who was hit by three bullets, is in relatively were still at large.

Officials were quick to condemn the attack. good condition,” Silberstein said.

Liora Silberstein, Shira’s mother, said, “I Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the gave her my hand. I sang to her, and tears ran start of a Likud faction meeting that “abhorrent down her face. We need to tell the government terrorists tried to murder a mother and the baby that it is unconscionable that innocent children in her womb. This is monstrous.”

“I think it is too much to expect a condemnaare standing there being shot at.”

Rafael Ish-Ran, Shira’s father-in-law, said, tion from the Palestinian Authority,” Netanyahu “Amichai and Shira were with us at home and continued. “They only contribute to incitement needed to get to [the settlement of] Elon Moreh, here. Our security forces are pursuing the murso they had to hitchhike. The terrorists ap- derers. They will capture them. We will prosproached, slowed down, and fired. They saw a ecute them to the fullest extent of the law and pregnant woman and said, ‘Great, we should get settle the score with them.” her,’ and fired. Amichai saw Shira lying on the Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said, “We ground, bleeding badly, and stopped the bleed- will pursue, apprehend and make these despiing with his hands until help arrived. The Lord cable terrorists pay. Terrorists who shot at innohas worked a wonder and a miracle for us.” cent men, boys, and a pregnant woman.”

Shira’s sisters, twins Esther and Eliana, are Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called on Neasking everyone to pray for her. tanyahu to take action to regulate the status of “We’re seven brothers and sisters,” they said. the settlement of Ofra.

“Shira is the oldest and she has a twin brother.

“Every terrorist attack should strengthen The baby is our family’s first grandchild. Our settlement rather than weaken it, and every pofaith is stronger after this incident because a tential terrorist should know ahead of time that miracle occurred, and we hope and believe that he will be responsible for strengthening settleour sister will make a full recovery.” ments,” Shaked said.

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

Victim’s father: Pray for daughter and newborn

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December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

With frost nipping at our noses, it’s soup time!

Kosher Kitchen

Joni SchocKeTT

Jewish Star columnist

I

t is 30 degrees outside, and the wind is howling. It’s amazing how fast winter appears. Sometimes I wonder why I stay in this climate. My nose is always freezing, my lips are always chapped, and I use hand cream by the gallon. I just want to hibernate until the landscape turns green again.

All the cold weather changes our food choices. We’re back to winter foods — those stick-to-your-ribs dishes that people make in winter and avoid all spring, summer and fall.

Although I have never figured out why anyone would want food to stick to their ribs and not travel through their digestive track, I get the idea of eating heavy foods that take longer to digest and are steaming hot.

If you are a carnivore, you eat stews and more meat in the winter. Cavemen hunted for meat in the winter, eating vegetables and grains in the summer and fall because they were available. Even though we can get all these foods year round, we still gravitate to meat in the winter and lighter foods in the summer. Even vegetarians and vegans look for more beans and hearty veggies in the winter.

We also gravitate to soups. Their joys are countless. Soups soothe and warm, they comfort, they nourish the soul as well as the body, and they fill us with warmth. They heal as well — chicken soup is prescribed for upper respiratory infections, and vegetable soup is healthful and perfect for anyone with a virus or recovering from surgery. It is filled with healthful nutrients and is easy to digest.

Soup is the perfect diet food. Anyone on a diet knows that a bowl of light, broth-like veggie soup before dinner can decrease the number of calories consumed in the meal.

We can’t change the season. It’s grey and cold and miserable — unless you are one of those people who loves cold weather. But we can make it more tolerable with some delicious, nutritious soup to soothe that first winter cold and help you avoid winter weight gain.

Roasted Garlic, Leek and Potato Soup (dairy or pareve) 2 heads garlic, or about 20 cloves

1/2 to 2/3 cup canola oil 2 to 3 large leeks, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced, slices broken apart 1-1/2 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes 3 to 4 cups vegetable broth Salt and pepper, to taste Optional: 1 cup milk or non-dairy substitute Place the garlic cloves and oil in a small, heavy saucepan over medium-low heat. The oil should cover the cloves completely. If it does not, add more oil.

Simmer until the cloves are golden and softened, about 20 minutes or more. When done, remove from the heat and let cool.

Place 2 to 3 Tbsp. of the oil in which the garlic was cooked in a soup pot. Add the sliced leeks and cook until softened, about 10 minutes. Stir often to break up the slices.

Strain the garlic cloves over a container. Add the cloves to the soup pot and reserve the oil for another use. (It’s great in salad dressings.) Add the potatoes to the soup pot and mix well. Add broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, until potatoes have broken down and are mushy.

Use an immersion blender to emulsify the soup until it is creamy. Add the milk or cream and mix well. Heat until steaming, but not boiling. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with snipped chives or scallions. Serves 4 to 6.

NOTE: You can add personalize this soup to your family’s tastes. Use buttermilk instead of milk for a little tang. You can also add sour cream or yogurt. Add some thyme or oregano, if you like, or add some carrots to the recipe while cooking for a bit of sweetness. You can also season with smoked salt or a bit of chili powder or tobacco sauce.

Turkish Lentil Soup (Pareve or Dairy) 1/3 cup olive oil 2 large onions, diced 4 garlic cloves, minced 2 quarts vegetable broth 1 lb. dried red or mixed lentils (red, brown, etc.)

2 to 3 fresh tomatoes, peeled, seeded and quartered OR 2 carrots, peeled and diced 2 potatoes, peeled and diced 3 ribs celery, diced 1-1/2 tsp. Kosher salt, to taste 1/2 tsp. pepper

Pour the olive oil into a large soup pot and add the onions and garlic. Sauté until lightly golden, about 7 minutes. In a large pot, bring the water to a boil. Add all the ingredients and boil for 15 minutes.

Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 to 60 minutes more. Taste and adjust seasonings.

You can use an immersion blended and blend the soup to any consistency you like or leave the lentils and veggies whole. Makes about 4 quarts soup.

Variations: Try adding cooked rice or macaroni. Or, just before serving, you can add some freshly made large toasted croutons and/ or sprinkle some Parmesan cheese over the top. You can also drizzle some mild chili oil in a design on the soup before serving, or top with toasted, chopped pistachio nuts.

White Bean and Kale Soup (Pareve or Meat) 3 to 5 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil 2 large onions, chopped 6 to 10 cloves garlic, minced 3 to 6 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced 2 to 4 ribs celery, thinly sliced 2 large yellow gold potatoes, peeled and diced 2 bay leaves 2 to 3 quarts vegetable or chicken stock 2 to 3 cans white navy beans, rinsed and drained 1 large bunch kale, washed thoroughly, stemmed and cut into bite-sized pieces 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes salt and pepper to taste 1/4 cup chopped, fresh parsley Optional: 1 to 2 cans red beans, rinsed, drained 1 large can (28 oz.) diced tomatoes with liquid

Heat the oil in a heavy stockpot. Add onions and garlic and heat until translucent, 5 to 9 minutes. Add the carrots, celery, and potatoes, and cook until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir frequently. Add the bay leaves and mix well.

Slowly add the stock and beans and simmer for about 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the bay leaves and discard. Add the kale and simmer for another 30 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Simmer an additional 5 to 10 minutes. Garnish with minced parsley.

Serves a crowd.

If you hate kale, use baby spinach leaves for the last 5 minutes of cooking time.

Variation: For an added calcium boost, add some broccoli florets to the soup during the last 5 to 8 minutes of cooking. You can add any vegetables or beans you like — I have used frozen lima beans and frozen cut green beans instead of the white beans and kale.

Bimbo dropping kosher seal from all its breads

By Elizabeth Kratz, JNS Bimbo Bakeries USA, a subsidiary of Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo — one of the world’s largest baked-goods conglomerates with America’s largest private-label bread-baking business — made the decision in 2017 to drop the world’s largest kosher symbol, the OU (Orthodox Union) certification, from many of its products.

In recent months, consumers have noted that certifications have begun to drop off a large portion of the business’ Kof-K certified products as well, which included nationally distributed household-staple sandwich breads and buns such as Stroehmann, Oroweat, Arnold’s, Brownberry and Freihofer’s.

Consumers may have initially thought that these were isolated business decisions or costcutting measures to use one kosher certifying agency rather than another. However, that’s not the case.

As the story has unfolded over the last few

days, it has become clear that the dropping of two agencies is part of a larger decision that could affect a wide swathe of kosher-keeping consumers.

“To enable more efficient operations, we’ve made the decision to remove kosher certification from our bread products,” said Nicole Lasorda, speaking on behalf of Bimbo Bakeries USA. “This change will not impact the quality, freshness or availability of our products.”

Rabbi Daniel Senter, administrator for the Kof-K kosher agency, explained that the way bakery businesses have conglomerated in the United States means that multiple items under multiple labels are produced in different factories around the country. Kosher certifications may present restrictions on what baked goods can be produced in which factories, which Bimbo may not see as relevant from a business perspective.

“If this trend continues, this will have ramifications for many kosher consumers to be

The logo for Bimbo Bakeries USA.

Bimbo Bakeries

able to purchase bread,” he said.

In interviews, kashruth administrators from the OU, the OK and the Kof-K all expressed the need for kosher-keeping consumers to carefully check the packaging of items they purchase.

Senter added that regional supermarket brands/private labels that have previously been under Kof-K certifications are, in large

part, owned by Bimbo, and are set to lose their certifications as well.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operating officer of the Orthodox Union, said “we still consider Bimbo/Arnold’s a very important company in the world of kosher; these are foods that the kosher consumer relies on.”

But Menachem Lubinsky, a kosher-industry veteran and the founder of Kosherfest — the world’s largest kosher tradeshow — points out that “it is ironic that in a year [2017] where approximately 2,000 new kosher certifications were awarded that a company with a long-standing tradition of kosher certification should be one of the few companies in the last two decades to remove their kosher certification. This lack of sensitivity to an extremely loyal base is unprecedented.

“It is my hope,” he added, “that when Arnold’s recognizes the affront to a community that has been one of its key supporters over so many years, it will reverse its decision.”

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

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The JEWISH STAR

Wine & Dine

From an expert bubbe: The perfect roast chicken

By Ronnie Fein, The Nosher There’s no rule that says Jews are required to eat chicken on Shabbat — that is, no rule handed down by a rabbi or written in the Torah. But it is a long-standing practice for many Eastern European Jewish families to serve roast chicken on Friday night.

Why did it become the iconic Shabbat dinner? Probably because meat is considered a luxury, and therefore a fitting centerpiece for the most sacred meal of the week.

While chicken may not have the cachet of beef or lamb, maybe that’s the point: It is sumptuous, yet much more affordable and more widely available than other kinds of meat. In the shtetls a family might own a cow, but who would ever think to slaughter an entire cow and the precious source of milk and cheese?

On the other hand, there were always a few chickens clucking around the yard.

Chickens mature and reproduce quickly, assuring an ample supply of eggs and also a plump bird for a Shabbat dinner.

There’s this, too: Chicken is flavorful but mild. It takes to almost any seasoning. It’s hard not to like because you can cook it so many ways. The great Julia Child — who could cook anything — said it was her favorite dinner. “Roast chicken has always been one of life’s great pleasures,” she said.

But how do you make perfect roasted chicken? It’s one of those deceptively simple recipes, not elaborate or difficult, and more about what not to do. You can season it the way you like, stuff it or not, baste it or not, make gravy or not — just don’t overcook it.

Overcooked chicken is dry and chewy, “a shame” according to Child.

First, begin with a plump, at least 4-pound chicken. Keep it whole, because that helps keep the meat moist. There is such a thing as a true “roasting chicken” — an older, more flavorful bird — but most markets simply sell a whole chicken. It could be a broiler-fryer or a roasting chicken and you simply can’t tell.

A good butcher will know the difference between a roasting bird and you can always ask.

Rinse the bird, discard any debris inside the cavity, and remove the package of giblets (which you can cook with the chicken or save for stock).

Next, dry the surface, rub the skin with vegetable oil or olive oil, and season it with spices of your choice (my master recipe keeps the seasoning simple). You can stuff the bird if you wish, but if you do, increase the cooking time. I don’t bother trussing the legs together.

That may make finished chicken look better, but it keeps the dark meat from cooking as quickly and the white meat may dry out before the dark is done.

To help keep the skin crispy, use a pan that holds heat well: metal, ceramic, or Pyrex as opposed to disposable aluminum. In addition, place the chicken on a rack. A rack allows all surfaces to be exposed to the dry heat and also prevents the chicken from sitting in its own rendered fat. If you have a vertical poultry roaster, use that.

Start the roasting at 400 degrees, which helps set the skin to proper crispness. Turn the heat down after some initial cooking, otherwise the meat can dry out too quickly.

Basting isn’t necessary; it doesn’t make the meat moister, but it does add flavor.

Use whichever basting fluids suit your fancy (stock, wine, fruit juice). Let the bird cook for about 20 minutes before the first basting, so the seasonings will stay on the skin, then baste every 20 minutes or so until about 20 minutes before you expect the bird to be done. Basting after that point will make the skin soggy.

Roasting time for chicken depends on the bird’s weight. I suggest using a meat

thermometer to be sure the chicken is fully cooked. Place the thermometer into the thickest part of the inner thigh. The USDA recommends cooking chicken to 165 degrees.

To lock in the bird’s delicious natural fluids, let it rest for 15 minutes before you cut it into pieces.

Master roast chicken 1 whole roasting chicken, 4 to 6 lbs 1 to 2 Tbsp. olive oil or vegetable oil Salt, black pepper, garlic powder and paprika 1 cup liquid such as stock or juice Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the plastic bag of giblets from inside the bird.

Wash the giblets if you want to roast and eat them. Put them in the roasting pan.

Wash the chicken inside and out; dry with paper towels. Place the chicken on a rack in the roasting pan. Rub the surface with the oil. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, pepper,

garlic powder and paprika. Place the chicken breast-side down on the rack.

Put the chicken in the oven.

Roast 15 minutes. Reduce the oven heat to 350 degrees. Roast for 30 minutes, basting once or twice during that time with stock or juice.

Turn the chicken breast-side up.

Continue to roast the chicken for about 45 to 60 minutes, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh registers 165 degrees, or when the juices run clear when the thigh is pricked with the tines of a fork. Do not baste for the last 20 minutes of roasting time.

After you take the chicken out of the oven, let it rest for 15 minutes before you carve it.

Lemon-oregano roast chicken 1 whole roasting chicken, 4 to 6 pounds 1/3 cup lemon juice 1/4 cup olive oil 1 large clove garlic, finely chopped 1 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tsp. dried oregano) 2 tsp. finely chopped fresh basil Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste Follow the roasting procedure directions for roast chicken, but do not prepare the chicken with vegetable oil and spices and do not use the stock, white wine, or juice.

Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, oregano, basil and salt and pepper in a bowl.

Either marinate the chicken for at least one hour before cooking, or pour over the chicken when you put it in the oven and use the pan fluids for basting.

Ronnie Fein is the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cooking Basics,” “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to American Cooking,” “Hip Kosher,” and “The Modern Kosher Kitchen.”

Grandson stole my Kiddush — and I’m delighted!

By Leon Moss for Kveller I was edged out on Friday evening. The carefully planned operation was carried out by grandson No. 2, the one with the red hair.

“Move over, Pop. I’ll do it,” he said firmly, prodding me in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

It’s like this: I say the Friday night kiddush. I have been saying it for 50 or 60 years now. I say it every Friday night. Winter and summer. With or without the book. Sitting, standing or even pacing, if necessary. I can say it backwards, sideways and upside down. I can say it faultlessly with the lights on or off. I can say it quickly in a monotone — or I can sing it like Pavarotti and and really schlep it out and turn it into quite a ceremony.

I began saying the kiddush on the Friday night after my bar mitzvah, when my own grandfather, who had been saying it since his bar mitzvah, called me to his side.

“You say it from now on, my boy,” he said in his unique accent, which he acquired first in Lithuania, then in Ireland, and finally in South Africa.

He gratefully shoved the prayer book into my hands. In Johannesburg, where I grew up, the entire family got together every Shabbat evening to be with our grandparents and honor them.

“Don’t forget the tune,” he added after I had taken the book.

The tune, such as it was, wasn’t much. Over the years it has degenerated into a toneless drone, which lasts all of a minute and comes to an abrupt end when the guests yell “Amen!” with enthusiasm, their eyes already moving hungrily toward

the steaming chicken soup.

This particular Friday evening was like any other, except now I’m the grandfather and my extended family lives in Israel, as do I. We assembled, with hungry children waiting to bite into the Shabbat special — chicken soup followed by roast

chicken and baked veggies — and anxious grandchildren milling around wondering why they have to wait for the kiddush before they can tuck in.

Finally, silence descends. I fill the old family kiddush cup with grape juice and pick up the book. I don’t need it but I always hold it, just in case. It flops opens automatically to page 124, as it has done countless times before. I draw a breath — but before I can utter a sound, I get the elbow.

I look down and there stands the redhead, 8 years old and beaming with confidence. He has learned to read Hebrew at school, and he can’t wait to demonstrate his newly acquired skills.

And demonstrate he does. He reads through the kiddush almost without drawing breath, hardly stumbling over the words that had once seemed strange and difficult to me. I thought back to the days when I started reciting the kiddush, and remembered with embarrassment how I had stammered and stuttered my way through it the first few times.

Even more aggravating was that my grandson clearly understood a lot of what he was reading. For my first 20 years or so, I was convinced the prayer was written in Mesopotamian or ancient Egyptian, so foreign did it sound. Only after Hebrew became our adopted language did things clarify. For my grandson, born into the Hebrew language, the words have meaning.

My first reaction at this domestic coup was one of pride.

No one in the family ever undertook such an important role until after his bar mitzvah, but that was in the old country.

I wonder what my grandfather would think. I’m sure he would be proud.

Leon Moss is an 85-year-old retired construction estimator.

Born in South Africa, he moved to Israel 40 years ago.

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Health MInd & Body

Discovery solved riddle of her sister’s illness

By E.J. Kessler for the Gaucher Foundation As a child, Eva Gelernt suffered mysterious ailments: bone pain in her legs and knees. Unexplained bruising. Low blood platelet counts.

Eva, now 24, visited doctor after doctor in Moorestown, New Jersey, but her problems were dismissed as growing pains. By high school, Eva was being tested by oncologists. The tests, however, never showed any malignancy.

It was only in 2014, when older sister Anya was engaged, that she found an answer. Anya underwent genetic testing in anticipation of having children, and she tested positive for Gaucher disease. When her genetic counselor described the symptoms, it described her sister’s problems.

“I thought, ‘that’s Eva, not me,’” said Anya Gelernt-Dunkle, 27. “Sure enough, it was Eva.” Gaucher disease (pronounced go-SHAY) is an inherited lipid storage disorder caused by genetic mutations common among Ashkenazi Jews. It’s a recessive disease that parents pass on to their children when both carry a mutation. Anya and Eva have the mildest form, Type 1. While Anya is asymptomatic, Eva suffers from the disease.

Those afflicted with Gaucher don’t have enough of the enzyme glucocerebrosidase, which breaks down a fatty chemical. They may suffer damage to internal organs and bones. More serious types of Gaucher cause cognitive problems and seizures, and can lead to early death.

Doctors found that Eva’s spleen and liver were grossly enlarged. She had experienced some deterioration of her bone marrow. She is being treated with a new oral medication t, Cedelga, and works with a Gaucher specialist to monitor her condition with an annual MRI.

Anya Gelernt-Dunkle, left, and sister Eva Gelernt decided to raise awareness of Gaucher disease upon discovering they have the ailment.

After their discovery four years ago, the sisters decided to raise awareness of Gaucher, which often goes undiagnosed though it can be identified by a simple blood test. The pair recently became “ambassadors” of the National Gaucher Foundation to spread knowledge of the disease.

“Far too many people have gone undiagnosed for far too long,” said Eva. Raising awareness isn’t important just for those who may suffer symptoms. It’s also important to spur couples to have genetic testing, so

if they are carriers, they can plan appropriately.

The National Gaucher Foundation released a short film to spread awareness of the importance of genetic testing. In the dramatic comedy “One of Those Dates,” Gaucher disease is brought to the forefront of conversation — on a first date.

For the past two years, the foundation has partnered with JScreen, a nonprofit that offers Jews subsidized genetic screening for more than 200 diseases through home-order kits. More than 1,580 people have been screened through the partnership, and 86 were identified as being carriers of Gaucher. Three had the disease itself.

“That’s pretty astounding when you think that this is a rare disease,” said Amy Blum, COO of the National Gaucher Foundation.

Despite its rarity, Gaucher is the most common genetic disease among Ashkenazi Jews, the foundation says. One in 450 Ashkenazim has the disease and as many as 1 in 10 may be carriers.

By comparison, 1 in 24 carry the gene for cystic fibrosis and 1 in 27 the mutation for Tay-Sachs.

Gaucher often is difficult to spot because its symptoms can mimic those of many diseases and doctors aren’t necessarily trained to spot it.

“Doctors are trained to think of the more common diseases like leukemia or lymphoma — that’s what they test for,” Blum said. “The average diagnostic journey from symptoms to accurate diagnosis could be five to eight years. That’s five to eight years of people suffering.”

Before scientists developed therapies for Gaucher, those with the disease were very sick. Today, however, with proper care and treatment, it can be as manageable as diabetes.

“They can lead very healthy lives,” Blum said.

“Knowledge can be power.”

Among the five FDA-approved treatments for the disease are enzyme replacement therapy, which requires intravenous infusions, and the drug Eva takes — a substrate reduction therapy that reduces the amount of lipid in her system.

To educate health care providers and the public, the National Gaucher Foundation provides medical education for practitioners and hosts an annual meeting that brings together experts and patients. The foundation connects patients and parents to health resources and seeks to ensure that patients have access to specialists. There is financial help available for those who qualify.

Eva has learned to live with Gaucher. A graduate of Barnard College in New York City, she works as the clinical research coordinator at the multiple sclerosis center at Columbia University Medical Center and is applying to graduate programs to become a nurse practitioner. Having to monitor her disease through MRIs makes her appreciate what MS patients go through, Eva said.

“I can relate to them in some way and make them more comfortable,” she said.

Anya, who lives in Boston, doesn’t feel symptoms other than the occasional bone twinge. But Gaucher symptoms can appear at any time — in particular during pregnancy.

Because her husband does not possess any mutations for Gaucher, their children won’t have the disease, though they still can be carriers.

The experience has made Anya a huge booster of genetic testing.

“I told all my friends who got engaged: Do this now, so you don’t have to worry about it if everything is fine,” she said. “It’s so easy.”

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Continued from page 1 The program features a unique course of study that supplements traditional training in Talmud and Jewish law with a mandatory certificate program in social work at the University of Erfurt. The seminary also runs a cantorial program in Leipzig for aspiring prayer leaders, and a preparatory program and support network for the wives of students and alumni.

The rabbinical seminary is relatively small — only nine students are currently enrolled, and just one or two are ordained each year — but its impact is difficult to overstate.

Prior to its establishment, most of the Orthodox rabbis in Germany were born and educated in Israel, creating challenges in serving communities that are overwhelmingly Russianspeaking. By contrast, nearly all the Rabbinerseminar’s 16 graduates are native Russian speakers, and many grew up in Germany.

“If you ask the average American Jew, would you like a rabbi with poor English language skills, minimal cultural references and little understanding of local politics, the answer would presumably be negative,” said Rabbi Josh Spinner, the executive vice president and CEO of the Lauder Foundation. “This is why the Rabbinerseminar matters, because imported rabbis are not the answer.”

The capacity to relate to the local population is crucial in a part of the world where building Jewish life presents unique challenges. Most of Germany’s Jews had little to no exposure to Judaism in their early years, and some didn’t even know they were Jewish until their teens.

When Rabbi Avraham Radbil first arrived in the northwestern city of Osnabrück, many of the young Jewish men there had never been circumcised. That presented obstacles to their full integration into the Jewish community — especially their ability to marry in a traditional Orthodox ceremony.

The Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin, the only Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Germany, held its 10th anniversary ordination ceremony in Berlin in October. The school’s predecessor was shuttered by the Nazis in 1938. Gregor Zielke; Right: Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu, center, rector of the Berlin rabbinical seminary, fled Germany as a child after Kristallnacht. Eight decades later he celebrated the reopening of the Berlin school in his grandfather’s reconstructed synagogue.

Courtesy Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin

Michael Grunberg, the longtime head of the Osnabrück Jewish community, said the Rabbinerseminar-trained Radbil was well suited to address this problem, because he himself had undergone a circumcision as a teenager.

“He knows how difficult it is,” Grunberg said. “It makes it easier. His history is the same.”

Benjamin Kochan, a 2015 ordainee who was born in Magadan, Russia, and came to Germany at 15, now serves as one of three rabbis in Dusseldorf. He focuses on education. Kochan’s ability to teach in both German and Russian is a critical asset in a community where 70 percent of the population are Russian speakers.

He says it’s challenging leading a community in which virtually no families are religious.

“I understood that we had to be able to build a connection to people independently, even if you don’t have the same values,” Kochan said. “You just have a person in front of you, and this person is very interesting — his life, his story. And this story can be something

which connects you to this person.”

The Berlin seminary evolved from work the Lauder Foundation has undertaken in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union. It has devoted tens of millions of dollars to building and sustaining Jewish life in places formerly under communist rule, supporting Jewish schools, outreach, summer camps and kindergartens across the region.

“When I arrived in Vienna in 1986, I was faced with anti-Semitism for the first time in my life, and it was at that very moment that I decided I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to preserving and rebuilding the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe,” said Ronald Lauder. “An essential ingredient to preserving and growing Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe is having leaders and rabbis who come from and understand the needs of the local communities, and it humbles me to see the impact that rabbis trained at the Rabbinerseminar are having on the communities they are leading.”

In 2006, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, recognizing the need for locally trained rabbis, approached the foundation about establishing a rabbinical school. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis and the grandson of an alumnus of the original Hildesheimer seminary, seeded the idea of re-establishing the institution shuttered by the Nazis.

The school graduated its first two rabbis in 2009. One, Zsolt Balla, is a product of the Lauder educational pipeline, having attended a Lauder school in his native Budapest before moving to Berlin to study in a Lauder yeshiva.

Today he is the rabbi of Leipzig, where he leads a community that is 98 percent Russian-born.

While not Russian himself, Balla was raised in Hungary and understands the sense of dislocation many of his generation experienced growing up amid the ruins of communism.

“I’m not here just for a job. We are part of this community,” he said. “I happen to be the rabbi, but I’m one of them.”

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Berlin rabbinical school crafts Germany’s rabbis

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Continued from page 1 and by Rabbi Dr. Glatt from the Jewish Press, as well as links to a halachic decision by a prominent chareidi authority.

In her article, Dr. Rasooly emphasized that “vaccination is clearly the most effective way” to prevent measles.

“Measles is highly contagious and the list of potential exposure sites includes shuls, restaurants, and simcha halls,” she wrote. “Individuals likely spread the infection unknowingly.”

She described the seriousness of the disease — “approximately 1/500 individuals with the infection will die. … Moreover, measles encephalitis can cause neurologic devastation and the virus can live dormant in the body and cause a neurologic infection that emerges years after infection.”

She concluded: “In your personal lives, you can encourage families who approach you with concern to speak to their pediatricians about steps to increase protection against measles.”

In his Jewish Press article, headlined “The People of the Book Should Follow the Book,” Rabbi Dr. Glatt spoke of the “small yet very vocal and influential group of ‘anti-vaxxers’ living in our heimeshe communities. They should stop reading now, as they will not like what I have to say, will not listen to what I have to say, and will write scathing diatribes against me. However, I hope the rest of klal Yisrael keeps on reading this critically important pikuach nefashos article, which the Yerushalmi essentially states is a primary chiyuv of a Rav to darshen (explicate) about.”

Rabbi Dr. Glatt continued: “This is only the latest … amongst numerous similar and preventable outbreaks in recent months and years, in our communities, in the US, Eretz Yisrael and Europe. … Almost all the cases of measles are directly related to someone (or many people) being unvaccinated and spreading their illness and ignorance to others.

“I am very sorry if that offends anyone, but one of my vaccinated grandchildren (2 years old) just had to get an urgent premature second dose of MMR vaccine and a 5-month old grandson too young to be vaccinated had to get a painful gamma globulin shot, because of such incorrect and therefore dangerous medical views. Hashem yeracheim.

“There is absolutely no one who disagrees with the psak that a parent is required to remove one’s child to safety when a danger is present.

Indeed, this is part of the basis for the halachic ruling of Harav Elyashiv zt”l who viewed normal childhood vaccinations as being an obligatory part of parental obligations.

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Continued from page 6 “There was a lot of disappointment” among Russian speakers over how they were received

by German-speaking Jews, he said.

Some politicians “played up” this sentiment, he said, naming the current president of the Berlin Jewish Community, Gideon Joffe. Born to Soviet immigrant Jews in Israel, he moved as a child to Germany. According to Lagodinsky, Joffe has “in Trumpian style played up the Russian-speaking identity card” in elections.

Lagodinsky and others accused Joffe of rigging the internal elections of 2015 and clinging to power with “tricks right out of the Soviet period,” as Lagodinsky put it.

Joffe, who has denied the allegations, did not reply to multiple requests for an interview

by JTA. But the fact that Joffe’s main challenger, Lagodinsky, also speaks Russian as a mother tongue “shows we’ve moved as a community passed the language divide and are focusing on the main issues,” Lagodinsky said.

To Lehrer, the historian, the internal divide “is a generational issue.”

“People aged 20 to 40 don’t care about this anymore,” he said. And whereas some aspects of the problem are “alive, it is quite literally dying out.”

“Harav Asher Weiss shlit”a, posek for Shaare Zedek Hospital, a premier Orthodox-run hospital in Eretz Yisrael, says it is a mitzvah and chiyuv to get vaccinated, bringing a proof from the story of Sodom from this week’s parsha. He further states that yeshivas have the right and even obligation to protect other students, and should not allow unvaccinated children into school.

“This is similarly the written psak of Harav Yitzchok Ziberstein shlit”a, as well as the psak of Harav Elyashiv, who ruled that parents have the right to have unvaccinated children excluded from class so as not to cause unnecessary risks for their children.

“Many other gedolei Yisrael … have all ruled that there is no basis in halacha to suggest that vaccinations should be avoided. All strongly urge and support appropriate universal vaccination against the major childhood potentially fatal illness that are preventable. Indeed, it is sheker (false) to officially vow that Jewish law forbids vaccination — which is the only way in some states to avoid mandatory state vaccination laws by providing such a false religious attestation.

“So why all the headlines, anguish and outbreaks in our camps, amongst the ‘People of the Book’? Why did 180 children, 80 percent who were unvaccinated, die in the US 2017/18 from flu, along with 80,000 adults? Why do yeshivas and camps have to close down and stop learning because of mumps outbreaks? …

“In my humble opinion, as a rav and infectious diseases expert, it is because we somehow have forgotten to read the (halachic and medical) Book. Halacha states that if there is a dispute regarding whether a patient should eat on Yom Kippur or if Shabbos desecration is necessary to save a life, the most competent and/or the majority of experts make the determination.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, all 50 State Departments of Health in the US, the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, the American College of Physicians, plus every other major professional infection control organization in the world, clearly opine unanimously. … All strongly urge vaccination as the only way to control these preventable and rachmana litzlan fatal diseases.

Chasdei Hashem, no one dies anymore of smallpox; polio is almost wiped out — solely, and only because of very successful vaccination programs.

“Why are people not following these medical experts as halacha requires? Why are my (and your) precious children and grandchildren exposed to lethal illnesses, forced to take painful and unnecessary additional medications and shots, because you, a non-expert, ‘believe’ otherwise? …

“All the major rabbinic organizations have rightly and strongly spoken out against physician-assisted suicide; I myself also recently published on this subject. Therefore, I feel compelled to publicly speak out (again) as well against ’non-vaccination assisted suicide,’ a cause which unfortunately does not get enough similar support.”

Next week in The Star There’ll be more Chanukah coverage in next week’s Jewish Star … along with…

•The Jewish Star Schools (back after a break for Chanukah)…

•Rabbi Binny Friedman, with a divar Torah from The Heart of Jerusalem…

•Jeff Dunetz, with Politics to Go, from a conservative perspective…

•Judy Joszef. Well, actually, she’s on a cruise and may not be return for another week with her latest on Jerry and Who’s in the Kitchen…

•Expanded coverage of local shuls and organizations … and lots more.

We’re “staffing up” for 2019, so please check out our employment ad on page 22. Apply, or pass the opportunity along to a friend.

By Dr. Alan Kadish, president of the Touro College and University System, and Dr. Edward C. Halperin, chancellor and chief executive officer of Touro’s New York Medical College.

Opposition to vaccination on political and religious grounds has been swaying parents across the country to refuse immunizations for their children. Recently this has resulted in two of the largest measles outbreaks in New York’s history, impacting haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. The opposition to vaccines is not confined to the Jewish community, but represents part of an ill-informed nationwide movement opposed to vaccines.

As of late November, there were 24 confirmed cases of measles in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park, and an additional 75 people in Rockland County had contracted measles as well. Additional cases are under investigation, and the number is expected to rise.

Childhood vaccines preserve health, prevent disease and save lives. Proper vaccination is an essential public health strategy and parents must be made aware of the scientific research on this critical issue.

Members of our faculty reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on the ability of the childhood viral disease mumps to spread rapidly among children in the close quarters of yeshiva study halls. Similarly, measles seems to thrive in these conditions.

Measles is a viral disease that can be prevented by vaccination. The myth that measles vaccines are associated with autism has been thoroughly debunked by scientific research. Twelve years after publishing a study that turned some parents against the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because of an implied link be-

tween vaccinations and autism, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet retracted the paper. In a statement published on Feb. 2, 2010, the journal’s editors said that it is now clear that “several elements” of a 1998 paper published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues “are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.” Wakefield’s U.K. medical license was subsequently rev oked as a result of unethical behavior, misconduct and fraud.

Measles cannot be dismissed as a simple “childhood viral disease.” It can be a serious illness in all age groups. Children younger than 5 years old and adults older than 20 are more likely to suffer from measles complications. People who experience severe complications may need to be hospitalized and could die. Up to one out of every 20 children with measles contracts

pneumonia, the most common cause of childhood death from measles. About one child out of every 1,000 who contracts measles will develop encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, that can lead to convulsions and leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability. For every 1,000 children with measles, one or two will die from it.

Measles may cause pregnant woman to give birth prematurely or to have a low-birth-weight baby. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a rare fatal disease that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life.

SSPE generally develops seven to 10 years after a person has measles, even though the person seems to have fully recovered. The risk of developing SSPE may be higher for children who get measles before they are 2 years old.

Several Jewish legal authorities have weighed

in on requiring children to have vaccines or allowing religious exemptions for school children to avoid vaccination. Recently, in response to the outbreak of measles in the United States and Israel, many have called for universal vaccination.

However, there still appears to be some resistance to requiring universal vaccination. One Jewish legal opinion written three years ago justified refusing vaccines on the grounds that the risks of contracting measles were low. These medical “claims” were erroneous then and are erroneous now.

Childhood vaccination against preventable infectious disease is one of medicine’s great triumphs. We support the proper use of childhood vaccination as a crucial technique of preventive medicine and decry those who make misrepresentations to parents regarding this important issue.

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Continued from page 1 “The FBI, our police and Justice Department employees are to be credited for working to stop the defendant before he could act.”

According to Jeff Fortunato, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cleveland Division, Joseph ultimately decided “to target two Toledoarea synagogues for a mass-casualty attack in the name of ISIS” and “will now be accountable in a court of law for his pursuit of a violent act of terrorism upon our fellow citizens attending their desired house of worship.”

He sent a plan for his attack to the agent earlier this month with a request for weapons and ammunition, officials said, and was arrested after he took possession of the weapons, two AR15 rifles, from the agent on Friday.

The FBI said that law enforcement became aware of Joseph earlier this year though his activities on social media where pledged his allegiance to ISIS and made videos to encourage others to join the jihadist group. He expressed hatred for Americans – singling out gays, Christians, Catholics and Jews, according to the FBI. Joseph was charged on Monday in U.S. District Court in Toledo with attempting to provide material support to ISIS. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

The Secure Community Network, a national Jewish community initiative, praised the FBI “for their ongoing and thorough work on behalf of the safety and security of the Jewish community,” noting that Joseph had been under surveillance for nearly a year before his arrest.

Michael Masters, SCN’s national director, called Joseph’s plans “highly calculated and inspired by hatred.”

“We cannot tolerate hate directed toward people of Jewish faith, or of any other religion, and last month’s mass-killing at a Pittsburgh synagogue is a reminder of just how real this threat is,” Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said on Monday. “As Chanukah concludes this evening, all Toledoans should reflect on the holiday’s themes of liberation, identity, and most importantly, freedom from religious persecution.”

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

Touro College execs: Vaccinations are a must do

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‫כוכב של שבת‬

SHAbbAT STAR

December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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For the brothers, a second chance Parsha of the Week

Rabbi avi biLLet Jewish Star columnist

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fter a cliffhanger at the end of last week’s Torah portion, our parsha, Vayigash, opens with arguably the most impassioned plea in all of the Bible — Yehuda pouring out his heart to the man who holds Binyamin’s freedom in the balance.

Don’t be thrown by the Chumash’s break between Yehuda’s argument and Yosef’s response.

In the Torah itself, the narrative is straight, with no added space, suggesting that perhaps Yehuda was filibustering, hoping that one of his arguments might break the veneer.

He was hoping for compassion. He was not expecting the potentate to have an emotional breakdown!

If it’s correct that Yosef interrupted Yehuda, it is worth going through each of Yehuda’s appeals to discover which button pushed Yosef to throw his lot back in with the brothers, giving up the game and revealing his true identity.

“And now, when I come to your servant our father, the lad will not be with us. His soul is bound up with [the lad’s] soul!” ow much does Yaakov’s soul means to Yosef at this point? He will soon say “I am Yosef; is my father still alive,” but many

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commentaries note the emphasis on “my father” — Yaakov’s portrayal by the brothers has been an impediment to Yosef caring about him through this whole ordeal.

“When he sees that the lad is not there, he will die! I will have brought your servant our father’s white head down to the grave in misery.”

This argument doesn’t work either. Yosef is not impressed by the way Yehuda will be perceived in perpetuity by the family. Yehuda wasn’t so nice to him in the olden days either.

“Besides, I offered myself to my father as a guarantee for the lad, and I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will have sinned to my father for all time.’”

Again, Yehuda’s place in the World to Come is irrelevant to Yosef. This argument carries no weight. “‘So now let me remain as your slave in place of the lad. Let the lad go back with his brothers!’”

Wait a minute. This is something different. Yehuda is offering himself in Binyamin’s place? He is willing to give up his own freedom? He is willing to be the slave he once sold Yosef to be? “‘For how can I go back to my father if the lad is not with me? I cannot bear to see the evil misery that my father would suffer!’”

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ehuda is saying that what happened in the days of Yosef’s disappearance gave minimal — if any — benefit. Though the brothers believed they were justified in getting rid of Yosef, the truth is that they lost their father that day. He was never the same, and now was at real risk of dying of heartbreak, although his heart had been broken for 22 years.

Yehuda has indeed learned an important life lesson. He was easily able to bear bringing the terrible news of Yosef’s disappearance to their father. But facing round two 22 years later, he “cannot bear to see the evil misery” his father would face if Binyamin was also enslaved. He is willing to go so far to replace him.

This is quite the revelation to Yosef. And so he interrupts Yehuda, because he, too, cannot bear to see the evil misery.

He clears the room, and says, “I am Yosef! Is my father still alive?’”

What is most clear to me in this story is how much people change over 22 years. Or, perhaps, over any length of time, if life lessons are heeded.

While commentaries are split on how Yosef as a young man behaved towards his brothers, it is clear from the moment he reveals himself that he bears them no ill will.

Yehuda, having lost two sons and a wife and having been embarrassed by the episode with

Yehuda wasn’t so nice to him in the olden days either.

Tamar, has learned that life is complicated. You can’t throw away those you don’t like. You have to live with people who are not exactly like you.

You will have to move on from loss.

Maybe Yehuda had to go through those losses to understand his father’s mourning for Yosef. It seems clear that the events of chapter 38 molded Yehuda into a leader, inspiring his father to say his tribe will be the tribe of kingship. e remain with a simple question. Yosef tests his brothers to see if they’ve changed and grown up over the course of 22 years, and in the process demonstrates that he has changed and grown up as well.

Do we continue to judge people based on how we knew them 5, 10, or 22 years ago? Or do we recognize that life experiences have likely shaped them into someone we don’t really know? How do we view people we know who have been to prison? Why are crimes of the past the way we always look at people, even after they’ve done their restitution, paid their debt to society, and — as far as we know — are not doing those things anymore?

Yosef tested his brothers and found they were no longer selling sons of Rachel down to Egypt, and were willing to give up everything to prevent it from happening again! That is penitence — when the opportunity comes and not only does the person not take the bait, but does a 180 reverse in the other direction.

And when we see that, it is time for us to forgive as well, and accept that a person who might not have behaved once upon a time but behaves now is as welcome in our home and community as Yosef felt those who had sold him into slavery were welcome in his palace.

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Inner strength enabled this rare achievement Rabbi DR. tzvi heRsh WeinReb Orthodox Union

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have known more than my share of families torn by discord. Most of us know a family in which brothers and sisters have not spoken to each other in years, sometimes having forgotten the original reason for the destruction of their relationship. My background and experience in the field of family therapy has given me even broader exposure than most to this unfortunate phenomenon.

Colleagues of mine in the practice of psychotherapy will concur that overcoming hatred and vengefulness is one of the most difficult challenges that they face. Reconciling parents and children, husbands and wives, is a frustrating process. The successful repair of ruined relationships is a rare achievement, especially after misunderstandings have festered for years.

The great eighteenth-century moralist, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, contends that these difficulties are intrinsic to human nature. Thus he writes: “Hatred and revenge. These, the human heart, in its perversity, finds it hard to escape.

A man is very sensitive to disgrace, and suffers keenly when subjected to it. Revenge is sweeter to him than honey; he can not rest until he has taken his revenge. If, therefore, he has the power to relinquish that to which his nature impels him; if he can forgive; if he will forbear hating anyone who provokes him to hatred; if he will neither exact vengeance when he has the op-

portunity to do so, nor bear a grudge against anyone; if he can forget and obliterate from his mind a wrong done to him as though it had never been committed; then he is, indeed, strong and mighty. So to act may be a small matter to angels, who have no evil traits, but not to ‘those that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust’ (Iyov 4:19)” (Mesilat Yesharim, Chapter 11).

To overcome the natural human inclinations to hate and take revenge, one must approximate the angels in heaven. How, then, do we explain the astounding reconciliation between Yosef and his brothers, which occurs in this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash? osef’s brothers came to hate him because of what they saw as his malicious arrogance. Yosef certainly had reason to hate his brothers, who cast him into a pit of snakes and scorpions. We can understand that he would attribute his years of imprisonment to their betrayal.

And yet, last week, we learned that they regretted their actions and felt guilty for them.

This week, we learn of Yosef’s forgiveness and a dramatic reconciliation — a total triumph over hatred and revenge. What inner strength enabled them to this rare achievement?

I maintain that there were quite a few. One was the brothers’ ability to accept responsibility for their actions. Over time, they reflected and concluded that they were wrong for what they had done. Self-confrontation, and a commitment to accepting truth allowed them to forget whatever originally prompted them to hate Yosef.

The dynamics of Yosef’s ability to forgive were different. He came to forgive his brothers because of two fundamental aspects of his

What inner strength enabled them to this rare achievement?

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personality: his emotional sensitivity and his religious ideology.

Yosef’s sensitivity becomes apparent to the careful reader. The most reliable indication of a person’s sensitivity is his ability to shed tears of emotion. Yosef demonstrates this capacity no less than four times in the course of the story: when he first meets his brothers, “he turned away and wept,” when he first sees Binyamin, he leaves the room to cry, after Yehuda’s confrontational address he is unable to contain himself, and in response to his brothers’ plea for explicit forgiveness: “he was in tears as they

spoke to him.”

But there is another secret to Yosef’s nobility. It relates to his philosophy, not to his emotional reactivity.

If there is one lesson that Yosef learned from Yaakov during his disrupted adolescence, it was the belief in a divine being who ultimately controls man’s circumstances and destiny. When a person has that belief, he can dismiss even the most painful insults against him. He is able to attribute them to G-d’s plan.

Thus was Yosef able to say, “It was not you who sent me here, but G-d.”

Luach

Fri Jan 4 / 27 Tevet

Vayigash Candlelighting: 4:10 pm Havdalah: 5:19 pm

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Fast of Tevet

Fri Dec 21 / 13 Tevet Vayechi Candlelighting: 4:13 pm Havdalah: 5:22 pm

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Kosher bookworm

AlAn JAy geRbeR

Jewish Star columnist

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his week’s Torah reading, Vayigash, reflects the narrative of the reconciliation of Yosef and his brothers, and the reunion with his father, Yaakov. There is much to be said of this saga. One very timely book on this biblical legacy is Was Yosef On The Spectrum?

Understanding Yosef Through Torah, Midrash, and Classical Jewish Sources [Urim Publications, 2019] by Prof. Samuel Levine.

Dr. Levine is the director of the Jewish Law Institute at Touro Law Center. He also served as the Beznos Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University College of Law, and also taught at Bar-Ilan, Fordham and at St. John’s Universities.

In his introduction Dr. Levine tells us the following: “The story of Yosef presents some of the most challenging questions of all biblical narratives … Leading commentators are repeatedly puzzled both by Yosef’s actions and by the events that surround him: from Yosef’s

bitter interchanges with his brothers which his father Yaakov is apparently unable to mediate, to the events in the Land of Egypt where Yosef finds both failure and remarkable success.”

The author’s narrative throughout the rest of this book follows through on this theme of Yosef’s experiences and of how his family conducted themselves in reaction to the varied events they experienced.

One telling response to this book’s narrative was by the distinguished talmid chacham Rav Menachem Mendel Blachman, the senior Ra’m at Yeshiva Keren B’Yavneh, who tells us the following: “Sam Levine was my student in yeshiva, and I have known him for decades as he has continued to study and teach Jewish law. I enjoyed his book on Yosef, which presents a thoughtful and creative literary analysis of the story, based on a close reading of the Chumash, midrashim, and classical meforshim.” o this approbation, I wish to bring to your learned attention the last section of this study. It tells it all, in the author’s words, about my own opinion of his work: “And Yosef said to them, ‘Do not fear . . . though you have intended to do me harm, G-d has intended it for good … to allow a large na-

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For Yehuda, humility and kingship Torah

RAbbi dAvid eTengoff

Jewish Star columnist

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ur Sages, in Tosefta Berachot 4:17-18, ask a fundamental question: “Why did Yehuda merit kingship?” After all, each of the brothers was great in his own way. Why, then, was Yehuda’s tribe permanently given the mantel of leadership?

One answer offered by the Tosefta is, “Because of his humility.” This is demonstrated in Vayigash, where Yehuda calls himself a “servant” no less than four times, and even offers to become Yosef’s slave — all in an effort to save Binyamin from that role.

He tells Yosef, “Please, my lord, let now your servant speak something into my lord’s ears, and let not your anger be kindled against your servant. … For your servant assumed responsibility for the boy, from my father, saying, ‘If I do not bring him to you, I will have sinned against my father forever.’ So now, please let your servant stay instead of the boy as a slave to my

lord, and may the boy go up with his brothers.”

Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 13:3 focuses upon Yehuda’s humility as reflected in these verses, and declares this to be the rationale for his tribe’s subsequent position of glory and honor: “Rabbi Berechya the Kohen, the son of Rabi, said in the name of Rabbi Levi: ‘The Holy One Blessed be He said: ‘Yehuda, since you have lowered yourself before your younger brother [to rescue him from servitude], when the Mishkan will be erected and all the tribes will come to offer [korbanot], no tribe will offer before you. Rather, they will all show respect and you will have [the honor] of being the first to bring [the sacrifices].’ Therefore, the Torah states: ‘And the one [of the tribal princes] who brought sacrifices on the first day… from the tribe of Yehuda…’”

We live in an age wherein arrogance is the rule, and humility is the exception. In truth, arrogance is the single greatest barrier to authentic humility, since it blinds us to the consequences of our actions and beguiles us into believing we are

Angel for Shabbat

RAbbi mARc d. Angel

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fter 22 years of separation, Yaakov was finally to be reunited with his beloved son Yosef. Yaakov and family came to Egypt where Yosef had risen to a position second only to Pharaoh.

The Torah reports the long-awaited reunion of father and son. “And Yosef readied his chariot, and went up to meet Yisrael his father, to Goshen: and he presented and fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while” (Bereishit 46:29). Yosef was obviously very emotional to once again see his father.

While Yaakov was surely overwhelmed to re-unite with Yosef, the Torah does not describe him as embracing Yosef or weeping in joy. Rashi, citing a Midrash, explains Yaakov’s lack of demonstrativeness: Yaakov did not embrace Yosef

or kiss him, because he was reciting the Shema!

At the very moment Yosef was hugging Yaakov, Yaakov was saying the Shema!

This is a very perplexing comment. Couldn’t Yaakov have recited the Shema a few minutes earlier? Did he really need to recite the Shema at the very moment when Yosef was hugging him? And does it take more than a few seconds to say the Shema?

Even more perplexing is the fact that the Torah had not yet been given at that time. There was no Shema for Yaakov to recite! And to deepen the perplexity, a Midrash posits that the Shema verse was actually first stated by Yaakov’s sons when Yaakov was on his deathbed, years after Yaakov’s meeting with Yosef.

What then is Rashi, and the Midrash before him, trying to teach? et us think more carefully about the Midrash that describes the origin of the Shema. Yaakov was dying, surrounded by his

superior to others.

As such, the Ramban, in his famous Iggeret HaRamban, strongly warns us against this negative trait, telling his son that “whoever feels that he is greater than others is rebelling against the Kingship of Hashem, because he is adorning himself with His garments, as it is written, ‘Hashem reigns, He wears clothes of pride’” (Tehillim 93:1). ext, the Ramban notes that whether it is wealth, honor or wisdom — everything is a gift from the Almighty: “Why should one feel proud? Is it because of wealth?

Hashem makes one poor or rich (Shmuel I:2:7). Is it because of honor? It belongs to Hashem, as we read, ‘Wealth and honor come from You’ (Divrei Hayamim I:29:12). So how could one adorn himself with Hashem’s honor? One who is proud of his wisdom knows that Hashem ‘takes away the speech of assured men and reasoning from sages’ (Iyov 12:20). Everyone is the same before Hashem; with His anger He lowers the proud, and when He wishes He raises the low.”

family. The Midrash suggests that Yaakov was worried: would his children carry on his teachings? Would they be faithful to the G-d of Israel? Sensing his concern, his children said in unison: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One.” The children were reassuring their father that they would follow his teachings and his faith.

According to this Midrash, the Shema is not merely a general proclamation of faith, but is a personal and direct statement connecting child and parent. It demonstrates an unflinching commitment to continue the faith and traditions maintained by the parent. It is a powerful link in the religious tradition, connecting the generations in a bond of faith.

With this idea as a backdrop, we may now revisit the reunion of Yaakov and Yosef. Yaakov was not really sure about the spiritual life of his son. After all, Yosef had lived in Egypt for many years, was dressed as an Egyptian, was married to an Egyptian woman, was raising his children in the midst of Egyptian society. Was Yosef still loyal to the G-d of Israel? Did he still maintain

the values and ideals of Yaakov?

As they were about to meet, Yaakov was not certain that Yosef still belonged to the people of Israel in a spiritual sense. But when he was so effusive in his embrace of his father, Yaakov realized that this Egyptian-looking man was in fact still a son of Israel. In a symbolic sense, Yaakov recited the Shema, the assurance that his child would indeed follow the faith and ideals of Israel. Although he did not literally recite the Shema text, he deeply felt its message of unity among the generations.

When parents and children can recite the Shema together, the generations embrace each other in a mighty chain of continuity. When there is a generation gap — when parents or children cannot or do not recite the Shema together — the Jewish tradition unravels. n a sermon delivered at his grandson’s bar mitzvah in May 1962, Rabbi David de Sola Pool spoke of the need for the generations of Jews to live their Judaism actively.

“We must not allow ourselves to become decrepit veterans dreaming of past victories in the struggle for holiness. We have to be something more than feeble survivors of once glorious days … Our life as Jews must be the result of someSee Faith on page 22

There was no Shema for Yaakov to recite!

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The Ramban is teaching us that greatness comes from G-d, and G-d alone. How, then, can we avoid the pitfalls of arrogance, and, like Yehuda, live lives infused with humility? We are fortunate that the Ramban addresses this fundamental question: “In all your actions, words and thoughts, regard yourself as standing before Hashem, with His Presence above you, for His glory fills the whole world. Speak with fear and awe, as a slave standing before his master. Act with restraint in front of everyone. When someone calls you, don’t answer loudly, but gently and softly, as one who stands before his master.” n short, when we truly feel ourselves to be in G-d’s presence, we naturally act with humility before Him — and with restraint and dignity toward others.

Yehuda had an extremely powerful sense of the Almighty’s presence in his life, and very often felt the gentle touch of the Shechinah upon his shoulder. As such, humility came quite naturally to him. Little wonder, then, that his descendant, King David, would one day proclaim to the world: “Sheviti Hashem l’negdi tamid” (“I have placed the L-rd before me constantly,” Tehillim 16:8).

May each of us try to emulate Yehuda and recognize the Almighty’s unceasing presence in our lives, so that we, too, may reject arrogance, embrace humility, and act with abiding respect toward each other.

Wealth, honor or wisdom — everything is a gift from the Almighty.

The faith of generations

and spoke to their heart.’ The text — perhaps tellingly and, in this reading, fittingly — does not convey the content of Yosef’s final words, as the content is not really important.

“More significantly, the verse emphasizes, Yosef has indeed learned to overcome his condition, to let go of past insults and indignities, to understand others, including his peers, and to talk to them in a manner that shows he relates to them. Yosef now has the ability to speak to his brothers in a way that can have a real effect on their feelings — finally comforting them — because he now has the ability to see their perspective and to touch their heart. This is now the true Yosef, outside of the trappings of the persona of Tzafnat Pane’ach, outside of the protective watch of either Pharaoh or Yaakov, truly reconciled with his brothers.

“At the conclusion of the story, the reconciliation is complete. Yosef has the confidence to put his trust in his brothers to insure that he is buried in the land that was promised to their fathers.”

Hopefully, after considering the above, you will have the opportunity to read this book and come to better understand the deeper meaning of Yosef’s legacy.

THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

The legacy of Yosef

tion to live. And now, do not fear, I will provide for you and your children.’ And he consoled them and spoke to their heart.

“Yosef’s thoughtful, gracious, and heartfelt response to his brothers, concluding this episode — and with it, concluding the story of Yosef — may offer a message of optimism for individuals on the spectrum, their families, and their friends. When Yosef’s brothers tell him of Yaakov’s supposed command that he not take revenge against them, Yosef explains that he has come to terms with what they did, that although they intended to cause him harm, it was all part of G-d’s plan for their success. He assures them that they have no reason to fear, and that he will continue to provide for them and for their children.

“Though Yosef has previously spoken to his brothers in this way, likewise in an effort to alleviate their guilt and fears, in the past his words have proven less than fully effective, in part because of his seemingly selfserving and self-referential tone.

“This time, however, the interaction between Yosef and his brothers is different, because now Yosef is different. Following the quotation of Yosef’s words to his brothers, the verse concludes with the declaration that Yosef ‘consoled them

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December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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Anti-Semites and their Jewish apologists JONatHaN S. tOBiN

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he most interesting thing about left-wing anti-Semitism is not so much the hate driving the trend as the impulse of Jews to tolerate or even justify it.

In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, there is no way to pretend that rightwing anti-Semitism doesn’t present a deadly threat to Jews, even if the numbers of its adherents are small and marginalized in terms of access to influence or power.

But when faced with the increased visibility and influence of people willing to openly advocate for the demonization and destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet, the reaction from some on the left has been to discount this trend, but to embrace it.

Last week saw a controversy over now-former CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill and his anti-Israel tirade at the United Nations, as well as open support for the BDS movement on the part of two new Muslim-American mem-

bers of Congress.

The most prominent example of the trend toward justification is New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. In her latest column, she makes the argument that supporting the elimination of the Jewish state is not only not antiSemitic, but somehow more in keeping with the values of Diaspora Jews. hile the argument depicts Israel’s left-wing foes as advocates of liberal values, the opposite is true. Goldberg’s stand justifies a form of bias that is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

That she does so while depicting herself as a guardian of Jewish values is utterly despicable.

Goldberg’s argument has a precedent. Anti-Zionism was popular among some American Jews prior to World War II. But if anti-Zionist groups like the American Council for Judaism declined from mainstream to marginal cranks after the Holocaust, it was because the overwhelming majority of American Jews were capable of drawing obvious conclusions

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from historical events. They understood that the Zionists were right about the necessity for a Jewish state in a world where anti-Semitism is capable of attaching itself to any ideological movement.

At a moment when Jew-hatred is on the rise, both in the Muslim world and the streets of Western European cities, that basic truth remains unchallenged, even as Israel stands in for the stereotype of the homeless, despised Jew that had long sustained such hate.

Goldberg claims that opposing Jewish ethno-nationalism doesn’t make you a bigot. But those who wish to deny Jews the right to their own state and the right to live there in security — things they don’t seek to deny to other ethno-religious groups — single them out the way anti-Semites have always done.

That’s why the BDS movement, which can now count among its adherents two new members of Congress in Democratic Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, is not interested

Israel remains a fundamentally liberal society based on the rule of law.

in changing Israel’s policies so much as it wants no Israel at all, and engages in anti-Semitic invective and violence to get its way.

Yet to justify their stance, and the notion that nice liberal Diaspora Jews — as opposed to nasty Israelis who remain determined to defend their state — should praise them for it, Goldberg distorts three basic issues. ne is that she gets the Israel-Palestine conflict dead wrong. The columnist claims that the Israeli government’s foreclosure of a two-state solution via settlements justifies Palestinian efforts to replace the Jewish state with a secular alternative. But to reach that conclusion, you have to forget 25 years of history during which Palestinians repeatedly rejected offers of an independent state, unwilling to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders were drawn. Israelis saw what happened when they withdrew every soldier, settlement and settler from Gaza in 2005; to replicate the terrorist state there in the West Bank would be suicidal.

She’s also wrong about Israel being antithetical to pluralist democracy. Though it is as imperfect as any democracy, Israel remains a fundamentally liberal society based on the See Jewish on page 22

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Pompeo doctrine: Fusing realism, imagineering Viewpoint

BEN COHEN

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ecretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a rare speech last week on the overall strategic vision of the United States, 30 years after the Cold War ended. The speech didn’t receive much coverage outside of the usual wonkish publications, and what was produced was mostly unflattering.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the speech was nothing short of “ridiculous.” The CFR charged Pompeo with hypocritically “tilting at straw men” (a range of international organizations from the International Monetary Fund to the Organization of American States to the United Nations) even as his boss, President Donald Trump, signals his “readiness to cozy up to strongmen and killers from Vladimir Putin to Rodrigo Duterte to Mohammed bin Salman to too many more to list.” Nor was Foreign Policy magazine any more generous. Its correspondent deemed the speech “tone-deaf and arrogant,” adding that “no one — except perhaps Hungarian Prime

Minister Viktor Orbán and a few other autocrats — bought it.”

It is a great shame that these institutions feel the need to ridicule Pompeo in a manner that his two predecessors — John Kerry and Rex Tillerson — would have been spared. Tillerson spent much of his career making nice with dictators, including Putin, as part of the 2014 deal brokered between ExxonMobil and Russian oil company Rosneft, while Kerry was the architect of the infamous 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which stabilized Bashar Assad’s dictatorship in Syria. I can think of much harsher words than “ridiculous” to summarize those actions. y intention here is not a full-throated defense of Pompeo’s speech. There were parts, particularly when he addressed the threats posed by specific countries like Russia and Iran, that were a relief to hear. But the Secretary also took a sledgehammer approach to most of the international institutions created after World War II, depicting them as self-serving bureaucracies standing in the way of — as the title of the speech put it — “Restoring the Role of the Nation-State in the Liberal International Order.”

The term “liberal international order” describes an arrangement of world affairs in which states based on the rule of law, democratic gov-

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ernment and social tolerance — foremost among them the United States — play the dominant role in international security. That has, more or less, prevailed since World War II. We have witnessed countless regional and civil wars, but not (so far) a global conflagration.

In his Brussels speech, the secretary of state recited a familiar list of countries that pose a threat to that order and yet in which prior U.S. administrations have still shown faith: China (“We welcomed China into the liberal order, but never policed its behavior”); Iran (“after the nuclear deal was inked, it spread its newfound riches to terrorists and to dictators”); and Russia (“Russia hasn’t embraced Western values of freedom and international cooperation. Rather, it has suppressed opposition voices and invaded the sovereign nations of Georgia and of Ukraine.”)

All these points needed to be stressed, particularly in the diplomatic halls of Europe.

When it came to North Korea, the doyenne of rogue states, Pompeo hailed the Trump administration’s approach of direct negotiations accompanied by international sanctions. “No other nation in the world could have rallied dozens of nations, from every corner of the world, to impose sanctions on the regime in Pyongyang,” he declared.

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ut in some ways, Pompeo’s remarks were a strange fusion of conservative realism and radical imagineering. For example, there were no calls for “regime change” in either Iran or North Korea, merely demands for their existing regimes to reform their behavior.

Many serial human-rights violators that maintain close relationships with the U.S. — Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia — went unmentioned.

He took an almost blasé attitude towards the European Union, arguing that the United Kingdom’s impending “Brexit” was a clarion call to ensure that “the interests of countries and their citizens are placed before those of bureaucrats here in Brussels.” This is hardly the most informed summary; Brexit will leave the United Kingdom in a far more distressed state, and the main lesson gleaned by the E.U. is that its success in strong-arming the British government means that the rest of its member states are unlikely to want to repeat that experience.

Pompeo’s implied sympathy for Brexit illustrates the danger of elevating the “nationstate” to an ideological principle in international relations. To begin with, you have to clearly explain what a “nation-state” is, especially given the widespread misconception that it is the same thing as a “nationalist” state, See Pompeo on page 22

stephen M. Flatow

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ew York Times op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg has stirred quite a hornet’s nest with her recent article declaring that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic. Others will wrestle with the anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism debate. I prefer to focus on one particular sentence that goes to the heart of the issue — and which reveals Goldberg’s ignorance of the history of the issue she is addressing.

According to Goldberg, Palestinian demands are reasonable, and it’s Israel that is being unfair because “the de facto policy of the Israeli government is that there should be only one state in historic Palestine.”

Ms. Goldberg is a journalist, and I don’t expect journalists to be historians. She has written books with titles such as The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, so I don’t expect her to be an expert on the Middle East either.

On the other hand, according to her New York Times bio, Goldberg has “reported from countries including Iraq [and] Egypt,” so she has a basic responsibility to be acquainted with major developments in the history of that part of the world.

But anybody who can write “the de facto policy of the Israeli government is that there should be only one state in historic Palestine” clearly has not fulfilled that responsibility.

So, I offer Ms. Goldstein a brief history lesson. uring the years when the Ottoman Turks ruled what Goldberg calls “historic Palestine,” it included the area that today comprises Israel and the region now known as Jordan. When the British took over the area during World War I, Palestine was a single entity covering the regions on both sides of the Jordan River.

When the League of Nations awarded the Palestine Mandate to Great Britain in 1920, it again consisted of one territory on both sides

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of the Jordan. But colonialist politics soon upset the apple cart. In 1922, King Faisal of Syria, an ally of the British, lost control of his country, so the British installed him as the leader of Iraq. Faisal’s brother, Abdullah, had aspired to the throne of Iraq. To appease him, the British decided to create a new country so that Abdullah would have something to rule over.

Where did that new country come from? It came from that part of the Middle East where there had only been a Jewish state: “historic Palestine.” The British sliced off the eastern part of Palestine — 78 percent of the land — and declared Abdullah its king.

It would have made sense for the British to call the new country “East Palestine,” since that’s what it was. Certainly the inhabitants of that region were just as “Palestinian” as those in the west.

The funny thing is that the Arabs living in that area didn’t consider themselves “Palestinian.” They had the same history, culture,

Rhetorical sleight-ofhand didn’t change reality.

Thank you, Mr. President Michael oren

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ver since Israel and the US struck a strategic alliance at the end of the 1960s, the world has seen that alliance as a measure of American credibility and power worldwide.

The closer US-Israel ties are, the stronger the US’s status and influence in the international community are.

Despite that, in times of tension between America and the Jewish state, the US’s stature is seen as less influential. For example, when former President Barack Obama distanced himself from Israel, Russia invaded Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, as well as Syria.

We can see the same dynamic at work today under the Trump administration, which is the friendliest Israel has known since the state

was established. his friendship isn’t merely personal. Former President George W. Bush, a friend and ally of Israel, said, “The US is not a country of 300 million, but one of 308 million.” But Bush had a secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who frequently made harsh statements against Israeli settlements and against Israeli military actions in Lebanon and Gaza and compared the suffering of the Palestinians to that of the black population in the US prior to the civil rights movement. There is no one like Rice in the Trump administration.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is adopting unqualified pro-Israeli stances and placing responsibility for instability in the Middle East squarely on Iran. In addition, National Security Adviser John Bolton has defied the Israeli-American alliance as “a cornerstone” of

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US foreign policy in the Trump era.

In addition, outgoing US Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley hasn’t missed a chance to defend Israel and its right to defend itself, and set a pro-Israeli precedent that others will find difficult to erase, even after she leaves the job at the end of this month. For two years, the White House has not voiced even a word of real criticism against Israel. he closeness is expressed by two historic decisions.

The first was the US withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, a move that served both US and Israeli interests. The second was America recognizing Jerusalem as our eternal capital, and relocating its embassy to the city. In both cases, President Donald Trump demonstrated that he was for Israel and took a stance against the opinions of almost every-

This friendship isn’t merely personal.

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‘Human Rights’ hypocrisy rena young

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nternational Human Rights Day was marked on Dec. 10, with special attention paid to the 70-year anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Over the last 70 years, technological innovations have radically changed how human rights groups engage with the public at large. With the advent of social media, they can amplify their voices at minimal cost. A well-crafted tweet or an eye-catching infographic can enable an organization to reach millions of people in seconds.

And while advancing human rights on social media is laudable, it also makes clear that the “universal” aspect is being replaced with more particularistic goals.

Following and analyzing the Twitter accounts of the two largest human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, lead to some uncomfortable conclusions regarding

the groups’ supposed “promotion of universal human rights.” adly, these human rights groups appear to be utilizing social media to promote just a small portion of the world’s human rights abuses, and not even actual war crimes.

For instance, on Nov. 12 to 13, Hamas and other terror groups targeted Israeli civilians with more than 450 rockets, amounting to nearly 500 war crimes. Yet HRW, the world’s “leading human-rights group,” and its director, Ken Roth, did not take notice.

Not one tweet acknowledging these war crimes and the human rights atrocities committed against Israelis. Not one post calling for the United Nations to condemn Hamas and the terror groups responsible. Not one article encouraging the world to express support for the children who spent nights in bomb shelters and will surely suffer ongoing psychological harm.

One might conclude that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a priority for the human rights group.

However, when it came to Palestinian riots on the Gaza border, known as the “March of Return,” conducted with the sole purpose of breaking through the border and entering Israel,

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HRW and Roth made it a social media priority.

At the height of the riots, on May 13 to 16, approximately 40 percent of Ken Roth’s tweets focused on condemning Israel for its response to the violence.

In the same months as the Gaza riots, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards arrested scores of women who took to the streets of Tehran demanding freedom and democracy. However, HRW devoted four times more social media attention to supporting Hamas’ riots than to defending and praising the brave Iranian women.

RW is far from the only human rights group with questionable Twitter priorities.

In March, Ahed Tamimi was arrested for assaulting an Israeli soldier and calling for suicide bombings, crimes with five- to 10-year sentences in many Western countries. In response, Amnesty International started a widespread social-media campaign demanding she be released. While Amnesty was campaigning on behalf of one young girl involved in violent crime, 110 Nigerian girls were kidnapped to be sold as slaves. Neither Amnesty International nor HRW wrote even one tweet, article or Facebook post about them. Yet Ahed Tamimi’s arrest warranted 11 posts on social media from the

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religion and language of the Arabs in neighboring Syria. They considered themselves “Southern Syrians.” After all, they were not the ones who came up with the name “Palestine” (the Romans had done that to erase the Jew’s connection to the land) and their identity was in no way “Palestinian.” It was Muslim, Arab and Syrian. recisely because the locals didn’t consider themselves “Palestinian,” they didn’t mind when the Brits named the new country “Jordan” in 1922. The local Arabs didn’t suddenly become “Jordanian” any more than they had suddenly become “Palestinian” when the name was applied to the area by earlier colonialists.

That rhetorical sleight-of-hand didn’t change the reality: An Arab state had been established in 78 percent of historic Palestine.

Twenty-six years later, a Jewish state was established in a small part of the remaining 22 percent, while the rest of that 22 percent was occupied by Jordan (aka East Palestine) in 1948. That land was retaken by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The West calls that area the “West Bank;” the Israelis call it Judea and See Times on page 22

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one. As a result, he only grew stronger.

That approach has not gone unnoticed by other world leaders, who are impressed with the strong stance the US is taking alongside Israel. They were impressed that the commitments Trump made to Israel, including campaign promises, were fulfilled, strengthening his reputation as someone who keeps his promises. That will help the president change trade conditions between the US and Canada, Mexico, and China.

Strategically, the president’s commitment to Israel has given credence to his threats to use force against North Korea if Kim Jong Un didn’t stop firing missiles at Japan. One result was the US-North Korean summit — North Korea saw that Trump lives up to his words, dialed back its threats, and held the summit. year has passed since the president stood up at the White House and recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Since then, other countries — including the Czech Republic and Brazil, have declared their intentions to follow suit. Likewise, stringent American sanctions are back in place against Iran and most businesspeople in the world — including in Europe, which fought so See Thank you on page 22

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two organizations.

Similarly, in April, the week that Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in prison, the Assad regime launched chemical weapons attacks on its citizens in Syria. Shockingly, yet consistently, Amnesty International had four times as many tweets on Ahed Tamimi as they did on the brutal Syria chemical weapons attacks.

The phenomenon of ignoring violations against some while promoting the causes of others is a consistent approach by the world’s most renowned human rights groups that cannot be ignored. et the question must be asked: Why does an organization that claims to promote universal human rights give more attention to an individual sentenced to less than a year in prison through a democratic process while completely ignoring the disappearance of over a hundred girls? Why too was this same individual given more social media attention than Syrians attacked with chemicals by their own government? And why do 400 war crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in Gaza not warrant even a single tweet?

While one can infer a multitude of possible answers, one thing is clear: On social media, HRW and Amnesty International are not promoting universal human rights.

Rena Young is Digital Media and Communications Manager at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalembased research institute.

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THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

Another Times columnist needs a history lesson

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Faith..

Jewish...

Continued from page 19 thing more than inertia based on the physical fact that we were born into the Jewish people … Within every one of us who is worthy of bearing the Jewish name there must be a conscious sense of a divine call to serve our fellow men for today and tomorrow … Weaklings among us may fall away as they have done in every generation. But the true spiritual descendants of Abraham, of Moses, and of all our heroic sages and saints keep the Jewish light kindled, and hand it down from generation to generation.”

When Yaakov recited the Shema upon meeting Yosef, and when Yaakov’s sons said the Shema at their father’s deathbed, the generations were united in a profound spiritual bond. We, their modern-day descendants, must also strive to say the Shema together.

Continued from page 20 rule of law. Replacing it with a binational state where Islamists would be empowered would not only destroy democracy but also endanger millions of Jewish lives.

Equally wrong is her notion that Israel’s attempts to forge relationships with Eastern European states means that it supports antiSemitism elsewhere. With so many enemies, its efforts to make friends in unlikely places are understandable.

But while some of those allies are problematic, the sad truth — as JNS’s Sean Savage points out — is that it may be that Jews are safer in Eastern Europe than they are in the supposedly more enlightened West. Ironically, it was the vicious anti-Semitism in the liberal Paris that convinced Theodor Herzl of the ne-

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cessity of creating a Jewish state.

What Goldberg is really trying to do is replace the idea of Jewish peoplehood with loose universalism that returns Jews to their old role of popular victims, dependent on the goodwill of others. rogressives who fall into this trap demonstrate ignorance of more than the realities of the Middle East.

Criticism of Israel’s government isn’t antiSemitic, but those who rationalize a cause that seeks to eliminate the one Jewish democratic state on the planet also rationalize a noxious form of modern-day anti-Semitism. Doing it in the name of Jewish values from a prominent perch in academia or The New York Times doesn’t make it less abhorrent.

Nor does it change the fact that their efforts will fail, as Israel, with the support of decent people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, keeps going from strength to strength.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.

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Torah Judaism and issues of interest to local Orthodox communities.

There is also an opening for a P/T Associate Editor to edit copy and perform a variety of office functions.

Send a descriptive cover letter, resume, clips (or links).

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Continued from page 20 equated with “national socialism,” “fascism” and “racism.”

In addition, there is a danger of making a fetish out of the nation-state, just as the Obama administration’s fetish for “multilateralism” led us into the Iran deal, and just over year after that, an unprecedented U.S. abstention on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

If there is a Pompeo doctrine, then perhaps it is this comment at the end of his speech: “Our mission is to reassert our sovereignty, reform the liberal international order, and we want our friends to help us and to exert their sovereignty as well. We aspire to make the international order serve our citizens — not to control them. America intends to lead — now and always.”

One country’s sovereign democracy is another country’s sovereign autocracy. Can a nation-state-centered world order be “liberal” enough to overcome the sacred principle of “non-interference” in the affairs of other nations? That is the question the secretary of state didn’t really answer.

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Continued from page 21 Samaria.

The Michelle Goldbergs of this world Photographers will cover events in the Five Towns and would have us believe that today’s conflict elsewhere on Long Island or on the Upper West Side and consists of Israel having a state in historic Riverdale on a freelance basis.

Palestine and preventing the Arabs from havOur newsroom alumni have become news media ing one if their own. It’s unfair, she says. It’s superstars in New York and throughout America.

You will not find a better, more professional growth asymmetrical. Why should only one side get a opportunity in Jewish media on Long Island. state? Both sides should have one! Two states Send resume, cover letter and clips (or links). In subject for two peoples! line, put REPORTER, EDITOR or FREELANCE. The truth, of course, is that there already are two states for two peoples in “historic Palestine.” There’s a small Jewish one, and a much larger Palestinian Arab one under the name “Jordan.” communities. P/T and freelance (set your own Now the question is whether or not to schedule!) with the prospect of fame (a Jewish Star carve out a chunk of the Jewish state and crebyline!) and if not quite a fortune, a modest stipend. ate a second Palestinian Arab state.

Sounds intereting? E-mail an inquiry to the editor for Goldberg would have the Times’ readers a prompt callback. Please put NEIGHBORHOOD believe that it’s only fair to give each side a CORRESPONDENT in the subject line. state. But that’s irrelevant. The only immediate question that needs to be answered is this: Can Israel survive a second RE YOU A COLLEGE STUDENT RE YOU THEifPARENT OFPalestinian A STUDENTArab state is created in Judea and Samaria, leavingWHO IsraelWANTS nine miles wide at its THIS midsection O YOU KNOW A COLLEGE STUDENT TO EARN SUMMER— much more), so your earning potential is outstanding. narrower than the Bronx in one small part of These positions (both full- and part-time, with the New York City?

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Continued from page 21 hard to the journalism nuclear deal — have been Any student currently enrolled in aprotect recognized program forced to is eligible to compete forcooperate. an internship with a Only this week, the must Chinese net $2,500 stipend provided

by NYPA. Applicants attendannounced they were academic willing toyear. significantly increase college duringthat the 2018-2019

Paid summer internship College students: Apply for $2,600 stipend The New York Press Association Foundation is sponsoring a number of paid summer internships at New York newspapers for qualified journalism students. Any student currently enrolled in a recognized journalism program is eligible to compete for an internship with a net $2,600 stipend provided by NYPA. Applicants must attend college during the 2018–19

academic year. To apply for this paid internship, complete the application that can be found at bit.ly/2Rx3U2X Deadline: March 1, 2019

their purchase of American products. The most dramatic effect was seen in the Arab world.

Hurry! Application deadline is March 1, 2018.

Arab leaders know they can’t step between the US and Israel and that they can depend on the president when it comes to Iran. That New York Press Association forms availablerapprochement online at: has Application led to an unprecedented between Israel and the Sunni Muslim world, a www.nynewspapers .com most welcome development, and not only on Iran but also for current and future American F O U N DAT I O N efforts to broker peace between Israel and the click on Member Services click on Internships Palestinians.

This is all good news for Israel. No one disputes that our diplomatic situation is better now than it was in 2016, and much of that is due to the policies of the current US administration. But not only Israel — the entire world can now enjoy the advantages of being able to depend on an uncompromising American position.

Michael Oren is a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

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December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779 THE JEWISH STAR

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23 THE JEWISH STAR December 14, 2018 • 6 Tevet 5779

The JEWISH STAR CAlendar of Events Send your events to Calendar@TheJewishStar.com Deadline noon Friday • Compiled by Rachel Langer Wednesday December 12

Women’s Shiur: Chazaq & Shaare Emunah proudly present international Speaker and Author Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller “On Being A Parent.”

Women only; refreshments will be served. 8 pm.

539 Oakland Ave, Cedarhurst. Free admission.

Sanctuaries and Battlefields: Rabbi Dr. Adam Ferzinger discusses the differences between Orthodox Judaism in the United States and in Israel. 8 pm. 409 Edward Ave, Woodmere.

Thursday December 13

Social Thinking Workshop: Parents, teachers and therapists are invited to learn social skills strategies for concrete thinkers, presented

by Hands On Approach. 8:15 am to 3:45 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst. 212-664-9101. $250 per person.

Kulanu Chai Dinner: Celebrating 18 years of Kulanu, honoring volunteers Michelle Sulzberger and Eta Bienenstock, and Amudei Chesed Barbara & David Goldenberg. Comedic entertainment

by Steven Scott. 7:30 pm. 775 Branch Blvd, Cedarhurst.

Saturday December 15

Tanach Shiur: Community-wide Motzei Shabbos Tanach shiur, now in its 21st season. Rabbi Pinchos Chatzinoff, Parshas Vayigash, perakim 48-49. 7 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst. 516-2955700.

Sunday December 16

The ART of Parenthood: The 12th Yeshiva University Annual Medical Ethics Society Conference will discuss posthumous reproduction, epigenetics, artificial wombs and more. Parking, breakfast and light refreshments provided. 9 am. 500 West 185th St, Room 501, Manhattan.

MES@yu.edu.

Benefit Brunch: Bikur Cholim of Far Rockaway & the Five Towns holds its 37th annual brunch for women, honoring Dr. Hylton & Leah Lightman. Guest speaker Chani Juravel. Free babysitting. 10 am. 728 Empire Ave, Far Rockaway.

FR5Tbikurcholim.com Open House: The Jewish Early Learning Center at Chabad Merrick invites parents and children to come tour the new facility and participate in a Q&A with directors Marianna Borets and Chanie Kramer. 12:30 to 1:30 pm; private tours can be arranged. 2174 Hewlett Ave, Merrick. 516833-3057 x 103.

Tuesday December 18

Tefillah BeShanah [weekly]: Rabbi Moshe Taragin of Yeshivat Har Etzion will speak at

Young Israel of North Woodmere in a series exploring Jewish prayer. 8 pm. 634 Hungry Hollow Rd, North Woodmere. YINW.org/event/tb.

Friday December 21

Friday Night Oneg: All men are invited to a Friday night oneg at the home of Rabbi Shay Schachter. 7:30 pm. 430 Forest Avenue, Woodmere. 516-295-0950.

Saturday December 22

Tanach Shiur: Community-wide Motzei Shabbos Tanach shiur, now in its 21st season. Rabbi Eliezer Cohen, Parshas Vayechi, perek 50. 7 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst. 516-295-5700.

Sunday December 23

Net Working: Join Project Extreme for a basketball and real estate networking event. Very limited seating. 5:30 pm. Barclays Center, VIP Suite. ProjectExtreme.org/REevent2018.

Saturday December 29

Tanach Shiur: Community-wide Motzei Shabbos Tanach shiur, now in its 21st season. Rabbi Zvi Ralbag, Parshas Shemos, perek 51. 7 pm. 8 Spruce St, Cedarhurst. 516-295-5700.

Sunday January 6, 2019 HASC Concert: A Time for Music 32 at Lincoln Center. HASCconcert.com.

#CommUnity: Achiezer holds its annual gala dinner at the Sands Atlantic Beach, honoring Yossy & Miriam Lea Ungar, Dr. Martin Kessler, Dr. Ari Hoschander, Michael H. Goldberg, and Shalom & Leah Jaroslawicz. 1395 Beech St, Atlantic Beach. Dinner@Achiezer.org.

Monday January 7

YKLI Dinner: 23rd annual dinner, honoring Rabbi & Mrs. Menachem Bornstein; Mr. & Mrs. Nesanel Feller; Mr. & Mrs. Binyomin Ganz; and Mr. & Mrs. Charlie Harary. 1395 Beech St, Atlantic Beach.

Sunday January 13

Darchei Dinner: Honoring Mr. & Mrs. Dov & Esther Karfunkel; Mr. & Mrs. Meir & Malka Fried; Mr. & Mrs. Pinny & Tamar Haskiel; and Harav Shmuel & Rebbetzin Chaya Feldman. 257 Beach 17th St, Far Rockaway. Dinner@Darchei.org.

Sunday January 27

Greatest Hits: Bestselling children’s recording artist Laurie Berkner will perform two family shows. 11 am and 3 pm. 370 New York Ave, Huntington. Tickets start at $19.50. 631-673-7300.

RNSP

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